DIGITAL PLATFORMS & THE TRANSFORMATION OF LABOR

Dr. Blake Hallinan

Digital platforms are changing how people work. These transformations include the creation of new types
of work, from the highly visible careers of streamers and social media influencers to the less visible jobs
of content moderation and training machine learning models, as well as new forms of algorithmic
management for gig workers (e.g., Wolt, Uber) and new forms of monetization in the sharing economy
(e.g., AirBnB). Social media platforms are also challenging our understanding of what counts as work,
prompting scholars to debate whether the generation of content or even behavioral data should be
classified as a form of labor. This course critically examines these developments, assessing how different
types of platform labor create opportunities for worker empowerment and vulnerabilities to harm. This
course also analyzes forms of labor organization associated with platform work, from ad-hoc strategies of
resistance to algorithmic management to the formation of unions.

Requirements
● Attendance & Active Participation

Grading
● Forum Posts (10%)
● Labor Platform Report (20%)
● Social Media Platform Report (20%)
● Presentation (10%)
● Final Paper (40%)
Course Topics

History + Theory
13.03.23 - Introduction - What is platform labor?
20.03.23 - Platformization
27.03.23 - Precarity

Labor platforms
17.04.23 - Gig labor
01.05.23 - Labor platform governance
08.05.23 - Labor platform inequalities
15.05.23 - Labor platform strategies

Social media platforms

16.05.23 - Creator labor
05.06.23 - Social media platform governance
12.06.23 - Social media platform inequalities
19.06.23 - Social media platforms strategies

26.06.23 - Presentations
Readings

To facilitate discussion, you are expected to be familiar with the required readings assigned for
each class. All required readings are available on Moodle. The syllabus also includes optional
readings connected to the theme of each class. Optional readings are intended for students who are
interested in a particular topic and provide a starting point for developing presentations and
papers.

Recordings

By default, this class will not be recorded. In order to facilitate engaged discussions on the ethics,
and politics of digital labor, it is essential that participants feel comfortable sharing questions,
experiences, and opinions in class. You may not create or circulate any audio, photograph, or video
recordings during class time without the express permission of everyone in the room. If you are
unable to physically make it to class, please let me know in advance and I will work with you to
accommodate remote participation or discuss what we cover in class. Slides will be available on
Moodle before the start of each class period.

Forum posts (10% of grade)

In addition to participating in class discussions, you are expected to post to the Moodle forum at
least 1 hour before the start of class each week (Monday 930). Your post should include one quote
from the assigned reading and one question related to the reading or the topic of the class. For the
quote, please note which reading it is from and what page it appears on.

Forum posts are graded on completion and you need to post 7 times to receive full credit. The final
class period - Presentation day - is not eligible for inclusion because no readings are assigned. You
are welcome but not required to engage with the posts from your classmates. I will incorporate
some of the quotes and questions into class discussion.

Labor platform report (20% of grade)

You will select one labor platform (location-based service like Wolt or cloud-based service like
Fiverr) and write a short report about labor conditions focused on one of the themes of the class
(platform governance, inequalities, or worker strategies). Your report should be between 750-1000
words and should include at least two sources: one from the class readings and one external source.

Due 15.05.23 on Moodle.

Social media platform report (20% of grade)

You will select one social media platform and write a short report about labor conditions focused
on one of the themes of the class (platform governance, inequalities, or worker strategies). Your
report should be between 750-1000 words and should include at least two sources: one from the
class readings and one external source.

Due 19.06.23 on Moodle.

Presentation (10% of grade)

On the last day of class, you will give a brief presentation (5 minutes) where you describe what you
plan to focus on for the final paper, discuss questions that you have, and receive feedback from your
classmates. These are meant to be informal presentations where we can brainstorm ideas together
and prepare to write strong final papers. Think of presentation day as an opportunity to workshop
your ideas rather than present a polished argument.

Final paper (40% of grade)

You will select one of two options for your final paper: either A) an essay or B) a research proposal.
Regardless of which option you choose, your final paper should be approximately 3,000 words and
include 5 academic sources (3 from the class, 2 external sources).

A) Essay option: Write an argument about the conditions of platform labor that addresses at
least one of the themes of the class (platform governance, inequalities, or worker
strategies). You are welcome to build on one of your research reports or compare the
conditions between digital labor and social media platforms. You should have a clear thesis
statement and use supporting evidence from existing research or empirical cases (e.g., a
forum post or a lawsuit)
B) Research proposal option: Write a proposal for a research paper that investigates conditions
of platform labor related to at least one of the themes of the class (platform governance,
inequalities, or worker strategies). Typically, research proposals should have an
introduction, literature review, research question (or questions), methodology section, and a
brief discussion of expected findings. You may use any relevant research methodology. This
option is required if you plan to write a seminar paper for the class.

Due 17.07.23 on Moodle.

13.03.23 - Introduction - What is platform labor?

Required Reading:
● Warin, Robbie. “An Incomplete Prediction.” Fairwork Podcast, November 2022.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6JQhvcPzgaA2oxl0kKtUSx?si=38ce311405f4451e.

Optional Reading:
● Graham, Mark, and Mohammad Amir Anwar. “The Global Gig Economy: Towards a Planetary
Labour Market?” First Monday (2019). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i4.9913.
● Hund, Emily. “The Birth of the Contemporary Influencer Industry.” In The Influencer
Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media, 23–35. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2023.

20.03.23 - Platformization

Required Readings:
● Casilli, Antonio A., and Julian Posada. “The Platformization of Labor and Society.” In Society
and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication Are Changing Our Lives,
edited by Mark Graham and William H. Dutton, Second Edition, 293–306. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2019.
● Poell, Thomas, David Nieborg, and José van Dijck. “Platformisation.” Internet Policy Review 8,
no. 4 (2019): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1425.

Optional Reading:
● Kellogg, Katherine C., Melissa A. Valentine, and Angéle Christin. “Algorithms at Work: The
New Contested Terrain of Control.” Academy of Management Annals 14, no. 1 (2020):
366–410. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2018.0174.

27.03.23 - Precarity

Required Readings:
● Neilson, Brett, and Ned Rossiter. “Precarity as a Political Concept, or, Fordism as Exception.”
Theory, Culture & Society 25, no. 7–8 (2008): 51–72.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276408097796.
● Duffy, Brooke Erin. “Algorithmic Precarity in Cultural Work.” Communication and the Public
5, no. 3–4 (2020): 103–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047320959855.
Optional Readings:
● Precarity Lab. “Digital Precarity Manifesto.” Social Text 37, no. 4 (2019): 77–93.
https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-7794402.
● Millar, Kathleen M. “Toward a Critical Politics of Precarity.” Sociology Compass 11, no. 6
(2017): 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12483.

17.04.23 - Gig labor

Required Readings:
● Ticona, Julia, Alexandra Mateescu, and Alex Rosenblat. “Beyond Disruption: How Tech
Shapes Labor across Domestic Work & Ridehailing.” Data & Society, June 27, 2018.
https://datasociety.net/library/beyond-disruption/.
● Woodcock, Jamie, and Mark Graham. “Where Did the Gig Economy Come From?” In The Gig
Economy: A Critical Introduction, 16–37. Cambridge: Polity, 2020.

Optional Readings:
● Bosma, Jelke R. “Platformed Professionalization: Labor, Assets, and Earning a Livelihood
through Airbnb.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54, no. 4 (2022):
595–610. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X211063492.
● Weigel, Moira. “Amazon’s Trickle-Down Monopoly: Third-Party Sellers and the
Transformation of Small Business.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2023.
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4317167.
● Easterbrook-Smith, Gwyn. “OnlyFans as Gig-Economy Work: A Nexus of Precarity and
Stigma.” Porn Studies. Online first (2022): 1–16.
https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2022.2096682.

01.05.23 - Labor platform governance

Required Readings:
● Vallas, Steven, and Juliet B. Schor. “What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Gig Economy.”
Annual Review of Sociology 46, no. 1 (2020): 273–94.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054857.
● Wood, Alex J, Mark Graham, Vili Lehdonvirta, and Isis Hjorth. “Good Gig, Bad Gig: Autonomy
and Algorithmic Control in the Global Gig Economy.” Work, Employment and Society 33, no. 1
(2019): 56–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017018785616.
Optional Readings:
● Chan, Ngai Keung. “Algorithmic Precarity and Metric Power: Managing the Affective
Measures and Customers in the Gig Economy.” Big Data & Society 9, no. 2 (2022): 1-13.
https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517221133779.
● Li, Angela Ke. “Beyond Precarity: Forced Labor in China’s Ride-Hailing Industry.” New Media
& Society. Online first (2022): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221080460.

08.05.23 - Labor platform inequalities

Required Readings:
● Hoang, Lyn, Grant Blank, and Anabel Quan-Haase. “The Winners and the Losers of the
Platform Economy: Who Participates?” Information, Communication & Society 23, no. 5
(2020): 681–700. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1720771.
● Rosenblat, Alex, Karen E.C. Levy, Solon Barocas, and Tim Hwang. “Discriminating Tastes:
Uber’s Customer Ratings as Vehicles for Workplace Discrimination: Customer Ratings and
Workplace Discrimination.” Policy & Internet 9, no. 3 (2017): 256–79.
https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.153.

Optional Readings:
● Doorn, Niels van. “Platform Labor: On the Gendered and Racialized Exploitation of
Low-Income Service Work in the ‘on-Demand’ Economy.” Information, Communication &
Society 20, no. 6 (2017): 898–914. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1294194.
● Graham, Mark, Isis Hjorth, and Vili Lehdonvirta. “Digital Labor and Development: Impacts of
Global Digital Labor Platforms and the Gig Economy on Worker Livelihoods.” In Digital
Economies at Global Margins, edited by Mark Graham, 269–94. The MIT Press, 2019.
https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10890.001.0001.

15.05.23 - Labor platform strategies

Required Readings:
● Yu, Zizheng, Emiliano Treré, and Tiziano Bonini. “The Emergence of Algorithmic Solidarity:
Unveiling Mutual Aid Practices and Resistance among Chinese Delivery Workers.” Media
International Australia 183, no. 1 (2022): 107–23.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X221074793.
● Irani, Lilly C., and M. Six Silberman. “Turkopticon: Interrupting Worker Invisibility in
Amazon Mechanical Turk.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, 611–20. Paris, France: ACM, 2013.
https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2470742.
Optional Readings:
● Bucher, Eliane Léontine, Peter Kalum Schou, and Matthias Waldkirch. “Pacifying the
Algorithm – Anticipatory Compliance in the Face of Algorithmic Management in the Gig
Economy.” Organization 28, no. 1 (2021): 44–67.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420961531.
● Doorn, Niels van, and Olav Velthuis. “A Good Hustle: The Moral Economy of Market
Competition in Adult Webcam Modeling.” Journal of Cultural Economy 11, no. 3 (2018):
177–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2018.1446183.

16.05.23 - Creator labor

Required Reading:
● Cunningham, Stuart, and David Craig. “Creator Labor.” In Social Media Entertainment: The
New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, 65–114. New York: New York University
Press, 2019.

Optional Readings:
● Cunningham, Stuart, David Craig, and Junyi Lv. “China’s Livestreaming Industry: Platforms,
Politics, and Precarity.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 22, no. 6 (2019): 719–36.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877919834942.
● Johnson, Mark R., and Jamie Woodcock. “‘And Today’s Top Donator Is’: How Live Streamers
on Twitch.Tv Monetize and Gamify Their Broadcasts.” Social Media + Society 5, no. 4 (2019):
1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119881694.
● Abidin, Crystal. “Visibility Labour: Engaging with Influencers’ Fashion Brands and #OOTD
Advertorial Campaigns on Instagram.” Media International Australia 161, no. 1 (2016):
86–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X16665177.
● Ong, Jonathan Corpus, and Jason Vincent Cabanes. “When Disinformation Studies Meets
Production Studies: Social Identities and Moral Justifications in the Political Trolling
Industry.” International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 5771–90.

05.06.23 - Social media platform governance

Required Readings:
● Siciliano, Michael L. “How Gatekeeping Became Digital: Infrastructural Barriers to
Participation in Conventional and Platformized Cultural Production.” International Journal of
 Cultural Policy 28, no. 7 (2022): 888–904.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2022.2137154.
● Pinchevski, Amit. “Social Media’s Canaries: Content Moderators between Digital Labor and
Mediated Trauma.” Media, Culture & Society 45, no. 1 (2023): 212–21.
https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221122226.

Optional Readings:
● Caplan, Robyn, and Tarleton Gillespie. “Tiered Governance and Demonetization: The Shifting
Terms of Labor and Compensation in the Platform Economy.” Social Media + Society 6, no. 2
(2020): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120936636.
● Cunningham, Stuart, and David Craig. “Creator Governance in Social Media Entertainment.”
Social Media + Society 5, no. 4 (October 2019): 1-11.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119883428.
● Gorwa, Robert, Reuben Binns, and Christian Katzenbach. “Algorithmic Content Moderation:
Technical and Political Challenges in the Automation of Platform Governance.” Big Data &
Society 7, no. 1 (2020): 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719897945.

12.06.23 - Social media platform inequalities

Required Reading:
● Duffy, Brooke Erin, and Colten Meisner. “Platform Governance at the Margins: Social Media
Creators’ Experiences with Algorithmic (in)Visibility.” Media, Culture & Society 45, no. 2
(2023): 285–304. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221111923.
● Are, Carolina, and Pam Briggs. “The Emotional and Financial Impact of De-Platforming on
Creators at the Margins.” Social Media + Society 9, no. 1 (2023): 1-12.
https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231155103.

Optional Readings:
● Johnson, Mark R. “Inclusion and Exclusion in the Digital Economy: Disability and Mental
Health as a Live Streamer on Twitch.Tv.” Information, Communication & Society 22, no. 4
(2019): 506–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1476575.
● Gray, Kishonna L. “‘They’re Just Too Urban’: Black Gamers Streaming on Twitch.” In Digital
Sociologies, edited by Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, 355–68.
Bristol: Politity, 2017.

19.06.23 - Social media platform strategies

Required Reading:
● O’Meara, Victoria. “Weapons of the Chic: Instagram Influencer Engagement Pods as Practices
of Resistance to Instagram Platform Labor.” Social Media + Society 5, no. 4 (2019): 1-11.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119879671.
● Leybold, Milena, and Monica Nadegger. “Overcoming Communicative Separation for Stigma
Reconstruction: How Pole Dancers Fight Content Moderation on Instagram.” Organization.
Online first (2023): 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084221145635.

Optional Readings:
● Bishop, Sophie. “Managing Visibility on YouTube through Algorithmic Gossip.” New Media &
Society 21, no. 11–12 (November 2019): 2589–2606.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819854731.
● Kingsley, Sara, Proteeti Sinha, Clara Wang, Motahhare Eslami, and Jason I. Hong. “‘Give
Everybody [..] a Little Bit More Equity’: Content Creator Perspectives and Responses to the
Algorithmic Demonetization of Content Associated with Disadvantaged Groups.” Proceedings
of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6, no. CSCW2 (November 7, 2022): 1–37.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3555149.

26.06.23 - Presentations

No Required Readings