Session Chair: Kylie Jarrett
Presentation 1
Bare lives underneath the platform: The biopolitics of Chinese platform food delivers
Songyin Liu(1,2), Hao Wang(2)
1: Shenzhen University, China, People's Republic of; 2: London School of Economics, UK
Academic research of digital labour stemming from political economy, labour studies, and platform studies have jointly revealed the structure-agency dialectics from macro- and meso-levels, drawing upon rich evidence about labour processes and relations, individual and collective agencies, and platform and algorithmic controls.
Based on a methodological toolkit composed of 20 in-depth interviews, 12-month participatory observations, and visual analyses, this paper engages with the existing discussions on digital labour by a materialist approach to the biopolitics of labour bodies.
The empirical findings can be delineated into three correlated yet parallel dimensions, the first of which is the bodies of the food drivers that are symbolically/materially reproduced and agentic at once, with platform power crystallising through their embodied characteristics such as skin colour, body scars and occupational diseases. Secondly, uniforms requested by platforms anchor the social identity of food drivers, providing symbolic resources enabling class-based gaze and spatial exclusion in urban space while also gradually evolving into a site for commercialising platforms by printing advertisements and recruiting information. Thirdly, electric vehicles and their accessories can be seen as productive organs as well as symbolic extensions of their bodies.
Overall, the paper unpacks the hidden and invisible labour of food drivers happening ‘beneath the platform’, countering the dominant assumption inherent of ‘platform’ as a spatial metaphor only encompassing social actions ‘on the platform’.
Presentation 2
BOUNDARYLESS CAREERS IN-BETWEEN VIDEO GAME FIELDS AND INDUSTRIES: THE JOB EXPERIENCES OF EXPATRIATE AND REMOTE WORKERS IN CZECH VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY
Jan Houška
Charles University, Czech Republic
The paper addresses the job experiences of expatriate and remote workers in the Czech game industry through their evaluation of its negative and positive features. The Czech game industry is divided between the video game field of smaller indie teams and the dominant industry incumbents, drawing from the same indie ethos. By using the push-pull migration model, both positive and negatively perceived qualities of the Czech game industry are discussed, complemented by the concept of boundaryless careers to address virtual connections to this production environment by remote workers. Method of repeated semi-structured interviews was employed to cover industry developments in a state of constant flux. 28 participants, mostly belonging to the triad of programmers, artists and designers were interviewed, with 14 from Eastern Europe and 14 from the West (i.e., Western Europe and North and South America). Respondents were pulled to the Czech game industry due to it being highly diversified into many mid-sized companies. However, they were met with shock factors, pushing them to move to other industries. Among them were discrepancies between indie and industrial qualities. Many studios had long-existing live service products, using outdated proprietary engines. Higher company structures were inaccessible due to being occupied by local leads. Similar contention appeared with remote workers, undermining the notion of boundaryless careers void of cultural influences. The Czech game industry was, likewise, evaluated as non-developed concerning labour inclusivity or diversified portfolios of games, with the risk of falling behind in the highly competitive and transnational video game field.
Presentation 3
Ready to hack: How bug bounty platforms create their workforce
Luca Perrig
University of St.Gallen, Switzerland
Bug bounty platforms are becoming a standard solution for detecting vulnerabilities in an increasingly complex networked economy. Serving as intermediaries between organizations and ethical hackers, they crowdsource offensive information security and show significant improvements in the detection of vulnerabilities.
In some sense, they can be likened to platforms of the gig economy. However, they stand out in one major regard: they do not have a pre-existing workforce. While platforms of the gig economy can rely on unqualified, often migrant, workers eager to earn the little money it provides, bug hunting platforms require highly qualified workers in a field where formal training is often lacking. This pushes bug bounty platforms to not only serve as intermediaries, but to also actively create the workforce they need.
This paper discusses the efforts needed for the establishment of such a labor supply. Four key requirements are identified. First, the workers are required to undergo proper training. The platforms thus design educational tools aimed at ensuring a skilled workforce. Second, bug hunting must be routinised. A precise set of actions, as well as standard software is suggested that largely automate the job. This allows for efficient vulnerability detection. Third, platforms must ensure competition among bug hunters in order to secure a loyal workforce. To this end, they will design gamification schemes, made of rewards and rankings. Fourth, platforms seek to embed bug hunting into formal careers. By building alliances with the industry, higher education institutions, or the army, they make bug hunting economically appealing.
Presentation 4
Taming the Algo: Grab Bikers Grappling with Platform Logics from Below
Giang Nguyen-Thu, Luke Munn
University of Queensland, Australia
How do workers conceptualize a platform’s algorithm and adjust their practices to its logic? To pursue this question, we draw on an ethnography of Grab, the leading rideshare platform in Southeast Asia, composed of 60+ trips talking to drivers on the back of bikes in Hanoi, and in-depth interviews with 10 drivers. From this rich material, we identify a strategic cluster of practices that we term “taming the algorithm.”
Taming requires three key moves: iteratively adapting behaviors to algorithmic pressures (improvisation), juggling competing demands to deliver a productive performance at bodily limits (scrambling), and repeating these activities over time until they become a baseline in the system (enduring). If done successfully, these moves establish routinized productivity, a pattern of algorithmically ideal labor that means the platform will consistently delegate tasks to the worker. Taming is inherently double-edged, an exhausting form of self-exploitation that nevertheless provides some predictability and agency to workers.
Taming the algorithm offers a contribution on two fronts. First, it allows us to prise the ontological and the technical aspects of platform labor apart: these moves are risky, brutal, and chaotic for workers but are smoothed into desirable integers and patterns by the algorithm. Secondly, it articulates a minor freedom between the twin poles of Freedom and Unfreedom as conventionally understood, showing how workers achieve some agency and some perception of power without fundamentally disrupting the systemic inequalities maintained by platform logics.
