JournalTOCs

Journal of Direct Data and Digital Marketing Practice
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.157

Number of Followers: 7

Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 1746-0166 - ISSN (Online) 1746-0174
Published by Springer-Verlag

[2469 journals]

Between mutuality, autonomy and domination: rethinking digital platforms
as contested relational structures
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  Authors: Schüßler E; Attwood-Charles W, Kirchner S, et al.
  Pages: 1217 - 1243
  Abstract: AbstractThis Special Issue advances a new understanding of digital platforms as dynamic and relational. An archetypal transaction platform, we argue, is comprised of three canonical social relationships which exist in tension with each other. The first is mutuality—the practices of sharing and reciprocity which animated the early days of the ‘sharing economy’. The second is autonomy—representing the desire for freedom and independence attracting many earners to platforms. The third is domination—the exercise of power and control which drives many platform owners and managers. As we argue below, these three social relationships are present in varying degrees on all platforms. By conceptualizing platforms as contested relational structures, we aim to bridge prior attempts to classify ‘what platforms are’ with diverse empirical studies of ‘what platforms do’ in different contexts. In our view, platforms can do different things at the same time because they are different things at the same time.
  PubDate: Wed, 18 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab038
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Strangers in the sheets: how Airbnb hosts overcome uncertainty
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  Authors: Ladegaard I.
  Pages: 1245 - 1264
  Abstract: AbstractUncertainty is typically viewed as an impediment to trade. I argue that in morally attuned markets, where actors seek not just economic transactions but also social connection, uncertainty contributes to market order and reproduction. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 40 Airbnb hosts, I first explain how market risks are inadequately mitigated by social credit data, that is, publicly available information about exchange partners, and by institutional safeguards, such as the platform’s insurance policy. I then explain how hosts overcome remaining uncertainties by getting to know and building rapport with their guests. This emotional labor is in turn converted to meaningful social relations that motivate further hosting. In some cases, these ad hoc ties transcend the market and live on as authentic friendships.
  PubDate: Mon, 27 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab013
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Crowdfunding artists: beyond match-making on platforms
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  Authors: Dalla Chiesa C; Dekker E.
  Pages: 1265 - 1290
  Abstract: AbstractThis article analyzes the role that crowdfunding plays for artists who create small-scale projects. We find that artists struggle to reach new audiences and, thus, mainly use this funding tool to transform monetary gifts into reputation for their careers. Crowdfunding platforms are believed to lower transaction costs while allowing for more direct engagement between founders and funders. Instead, our study demonstrates that artists use the platform to build distance from their thick relationships and intimate networks where most of their funding originates. They hope that a successful project will help them cross the symbolic boundaries between amateur and professional realms. Despite a high success rate, most of them report not wanting to create crowdfunding campaigns again since they rarely reach other social networks. We develop these arguments to contribute to a socio-economic perspective of online funding platforms as important intermediaries in the career path of users operating at the boundary of amateur and professional production. This article contributes to developing a critical understanding of platforms, especially when users are not typical entrepreneurs or business-oriented agents but artists and do-it-yourself creators searching for funding opportunities.
  PubDate: Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab006
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Control and consent in the connected age: the work of contractors on
transnational online education platforms
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  Authors: Lin L.
  Pages: 1291 - 1313
  Abstract: AbstractDrawing on ABCKID, one of the world’s largest online education platforms, and its six competitors, this paper rethinks control and consent of work in the platform economy. Falling into a new category of home-based virtual platforms, ABCKID has mobilized a group of American contractors (e.g. stay-at-home moms) who were previously marginalized in the US labor market. Using interviews, surveys and online data, I found that most ABCKID contractors show high levels of job satisfaction due to their relative gains. Furthermore, although ABCKID imposes strict and direct control over contractors’ work content and schedules, it opens new room for contractors to adapt to control. Contractors’ adaptive practices have also made the platform’s efforts to organize control as games less effective. I argue that consent of work on these platforms is not only a product of relative gains, but also a result of interactions between contractors’ adaptive practices and platforms’ direct controls.
  PubDate: Wed, 03 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab007
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Steering the transition from informal to formal service provision: labor
platforms in emerging-market countries
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  Authors: Weber C; Okraku M, Mair J, et al.
  Pages: 1315 - 1344
  Abstract: AbstractServices that are especially suited to being offered via online labor platforms, such as cleaning, driving and tutoring, are frequently performed in an informal way, especially in emerging-market countries. The informal economy is thus important for recruiting workers for labor platforms. Platform use, however, requires formal service provision, which workers in the informal economy often resist. Thus, labor platforms have to promote workers’ transition from informal to formal service provision. While recent studies have hinted at labor platforms’ fostering of formal economic activity, we know little about how such intermediation unfolds. We use a process lens and comprehensive qualitative data on labor platforms in Panama and Mexico to study how labor platforms steer workers to formal service provision. Detailing the interactive process of workers transitioning to formal service provision as triggered by labor platforms, we add to platform research and literature on intermediation between informal and formal economic activity.
  PubDate: Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab008
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Odds stacked against workers: datafied gamification on Chinese and
American food delivery platforms
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  Authors: van Doorn N; Chen J.
  Pages: 1345 - 1367
  Abstract: AbstractThis article presents a cross-national comparative study examining how American and Chinese platform companies approach the gamification of on-demand food delivery. The study, based on ethnographic fieldwork in New York City and Beijing, shows how couriers in these cities negotiate the gamified app-based systems designed to convince them to log in and keep working. We argue that such systems are not only a salient form of ‘algorithmic management’—as has been argued before—but also demonstrate the central importance of datafication within the organizational strategies of food delivery companies operating under conditions of financialized platform capitalism. Indeed, the deeply financialized nature of the on-demand food delivery industry creates conditions in which companies experiment with data-driven gamification techniques in an effort to manipulate their flexible labor supply in an agile and cost-effective way—to thereby elicit higher productivity and meet expectations of investors and shareholders. Our comparative analysis challenges assumptions of a universal mode of gamification and highlights the differences between such situated techniques and their impacts on workers, identifying two distinct design approaches that we term ‘Deal or No Deal’ in New York and ‘Grab-and-Stack’ in Beijing.
  PubDate: Mon, 05 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab028
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Antagonism beyond employment: how the ‘subordinated agency’ of labour
platforms generates conflict in the remote gig economy
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  Authors: Wood A; Lehdonvirta V.
  Pages: 1369 - 1396
  Abstract: AbstractThis article investigates why gig economy workers who see themselves as self-employed freelancers also engage in collective action traditionally associated with regular employment. Using ethnographic evidence on the remote gig economy in North America, the UK and the Philippines, we argue that labour platforms increase the agency of workers to contract with clients and thus reduce the risk of false self-employment in terms of the worker–client relationship. However, in doing so, platforms create a new source of subordination to the platform itself. We term this phenomenon ‘subordinated agency’, and demonstrate that it entails a ‘structured antagonism’ with platforms that manifests in three areas: fees, competition and worker voice mechanisms. Subordinated agency creates worker desire for representation, greater voice and even unionization towards the platform, while preserving entrepreneurial attitudes towards clients.
  PubDate: Sun, 26 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab016
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Flexibility unbound: understanding the heterogeneity of preferences among
food delivery platform workers
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  Authors: Piasna A; Drahokoupil J.
  Pages: 1397 - 1419
  Abstract: Abstract This article investigates the preferences of food delivery platform workers regarding their employment status and working hours. We focus on the relationship between flexibility and protection, both of which can be understood—from a worker’s perspective—as a means towards increased autonomy and control. The analysis is based on a case study of Deliveroo in Belgium, which hired riders as employees through an intermediary, SMart. Despite their flexible working lives, most riders preferred employee status to self-employment. However, riders were divided in their preferences regarding working time flexibility, with many in favour of more regular working time patterns. To explain this divergence, we develop an embeddedness framework that relates worker preferences to the degree of their dependency as shaped by labour market and institutional factors. We thus link divergence in preferences concerning flexibility to workers’ scope for exercising control, their labour market vulnerability and economic attachment to the platform.
  PubDate: Mon, 05 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab029
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Framing disruption: how a regulatory capture frame legitimized the
deregulation of Boston’s ride-for-hire industry
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  Authors: Adler L.
  Pages: 1421 - 1450
  Abstract: AbstractThe theory of regulatory capture has long been used to make the case for deregulation by questioning the legitimacy of government’s regulatory function. How do government officials, who are tasked with regulating, embrace deregulation' This article explores that question in the context of Boston’s debate over regulating transportation network companies (TNCs). Analyzing media coverage, I identify two types of frames that emerged as stakeholders attempted to influence TNC regulation: issue frames aimed to shape the interpretation of the ride-for-hire industry, while meta-frames shifted the focus of debate from TNCs to regulation itself. Specifically, a meta-frame invoking the theory of regulatory capture became central. Supplementing media coverage with in-depth interviews, I show that government officials did not refute the capture frame but rather used this frame to draw a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate regulation. I propose that these distinctions are central to legitimizing a deregulatory agenda, as officials condemn specific types of regulation in order to shore up the broader category of regulation. The case sheds light on how the idea of government as an impediment to innovation is embraced by government officials themselves, paving the way for new market configurations.
  PubDate: Thu, 27 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab020
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
The platform economy matures: measuring pervasiveness and exploring power
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  Authors: Kenney M; Bearson D, Zysman J.
  Pages: 1451 - 1483
  Abstract: AbstractOnline platforms are pervasive and powerful in today’s economy. We explore the increased centrality of platforms in two ways. First, we measure the extent to which platforms are insinuating themselves into the economy. We accomplish this by analyzing the presence of platforms as intermediating organizations across all US service industries at the six-digit North American Industry Classification System code level. Our results show that 70% of service industries, representing over 5.2 million establishments, are potentially affected by one or more platforms. Secondly, we undertake a detailed firm-level case study of the mega-platform, Amazon, which demonstrates the ways that the aforementioned macro-level data is expressed by a single platform firm. This case study shows that Amazon’s growth trajectory has resulted in it entering and transforming existing industries and sectors. We conclude by reflecting upon the limitations and implications for future research.
  PubDate: Tue, 13 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab014
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
On Sarah L. Quinn’s American Bonds. How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019
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  Authors: Preda A; Lavinas L, Lemoine B.
  Pages: 1485 - 1495
  Abstract: financial marketshistoryUS Governmentcreditstate
  PubDate: Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab015
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
The virus and the vessel, or: how we learned to stop worrying and love
surveillance
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  Authors: Chorev N.
  Pages: 1497 - 1513
  Abstract: AbstractThis Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Presidential address was given (virtually) at the annual SASE conference in July 2020. It is an early analysis of governments’ response to COVID-19, specifically governments’ attempt to reduce the spread of the virus by modifying people’s behaviors. Some of these attempts followed familiar models of power, such as discipline and governmentality. In addition, I show that a new practice of power emerged, addressing subjects who are considered ‘ungovernable’. In the first part of the lecture, I look at how states see their subjects and argue that COVID-19 reveals and normalizes a state’s view of subjects as ‘unresponsive’ and therefore ‘ungovernable’. In the second part, I look at how social media companies constitute us as ‘ungovernable’ and help reshape how states govern. Finally, I discuss instances of resistance, which might save our political agency after all.
  PubDate: Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab037
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)
Erratum to: Variegated financialization and pension fund asset demand: the
case of Colombia and Perú
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  Authors: Bonizzi B; Churchill J, Guevara D.
  Pages: 1515 - 1515
  Abstract: Socio-Economic Review, mwaa033, doi: 10.1093/ser/mwaa033
  PubDate: Tue, 25 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT
  DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwab018
  Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2021)