One query on ChatGPT needs almost 10 times as much electricity as a Google […] search, according to a study by Goldman Sachs’ […]. In April, Ami Badani, chief marketing officer of British chip designer Arm […], said data centers powering AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT account for 2% of global electricity consumption. That demand, Badani said, could eventually slow down AI progress.

In July, Google said its carbon emissions have risen by 48% since 2019, mostly due to energy consumption by data centers and supply chain emissions. The company’s carbon emissions were up 13% year over year in 2023, according to its 2024 Environmental Report.

source: Qz.com

 In a world literally set aflame, and where development roadmaps seem to be governed by the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN for 2030, it is clear that Big Tech companies need to take immediate action to lower their carbon emissions, and that AI is now  at the centre of the conversation. As available data shows, AI is increasingly causing environmental damage: its large infrastructure is founded on the extraction of raw materials, electricity, and myriad polluting elements embedded in its complex supply chain. 

A rising wave of AI ethics is focusing on this precarious relationship between AI and sustainability, stressing how the ubiquitousness of this technology makes its environmental impact unignorable (van Wynsberghe, 2021). AI operates at the advantage of an era characterised by economic hyper-growth (ALLIOUI & Mourdi, 2023) where businesses playing in the global economic landscape are capable of (and are incentivised to) reach a +40% annual growth rate (weforum.org). 

In this economic environment, a growing public sentiment is turning toward degrowth (Schmelzer, Vetter, & Vansintjan, 2022). However, mainstream media, backed by Big Tech’s marketing efforts, paint a picture of steadfast techno-solutionism and the cause of the problem is offered as a solution; do a quick search on the internet for the query ‘Sustainable AI’, and corporate ads (often operating in the Software-as-a-Service industry) and consultancy blogs flood the screen with optimistic proposals and statements. 

This consumerist discourse is imbued with positivist rhetoric that paints AI and digital technologies as our exclusive saviour but, behind the scenes, there are uglier truths. Tech giants do not seem to want to backtrack, nor rethink their relationship with AI, as is clear from the newly signed agreement between Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Dominion Energy, Energy Northwest, Kairos Power, and other US-based nuclear energy contractors (qz.com). Within these agreements, for instance, Amazon blatantly defends its support of the “development of nuclear energy projects”, buying exclusive supply of ad-hoc built nuclear reactors, more precisely small modular reactors (SMRs).

While recognised as an effective replacement for fossil fuel-fired plants, these reactors require materials to be mined, supplied, and assembled. Additionally, experts are sceptical about their capability to fully supply energy for data centres, where operators would have to provide backup power (Lyman, 2024). It’s to be seen how that will support Big Tech’s goals of achieving carbon neutrality. 

These agreements are in line with tech companies’ trend to externally promote sustainable growth – an oxymoron in the capitalist system – and the familiar tendency to greenwash their entire supply chain and end products. These are marketing techniques aimed at appealing to the conscious consumer, but they are also PR strategies: companies increasingly have to appease the demands of investors who are becoming sympathetic to environmental regulations and policies. In the meantime, they operate in an economic landscape increasingly informed by the financialisation of natural goods such as forests and water sources, as seen with the rise of Natural Asset Companies functioning to privatise the property of all natural processes in a (US-based) territory (Bersani, 2023).  

Confronted with this reality, words from the Global Digital Cultures soirée of October 20, 2024, resonate with urgency: “We need an infrastructure of change,” claimed the University of Amsterdam’s Niels ten Oever, one that goes beyond the infrastructure of violence and profit-centred mindset that has directed technological innovations to this day (ibid.). Big Tech shaking hands with nuclear energy suppliers is a manual-perfect manoeuvre aligned with the trends identified by the Critical Infrastructure Lab: digital technology companies attempt to counter their environmental harm by trying to rely on more efficient energy, “over-engineering without tackling the actual issue” (Fieke Jansen). These propositions are enacted within a narrative framework that depicts AI as simultaneously an immaterial (therefore environmentally harmless) agent and the epicentre of future-proofing climate solutions, a discourse that mythologises AI and delays our collective margin of action (Jansen & Thorne, 2024). 

Hegemonic epistemologies are difficult to contrast, and changemakers can be fairly daunted by such delays. However, dialoguing with engaged scholars and researchers can provide some comforting perspectives, urging us to inhabit the ruptures within traditional barriers between academic knowledge and popular engagement. For example, we can begin reorienting our efforts and rethink innovations in terms of “infrastructure of peace”, a concept adopted by Fernanda R. Rosa to articulate open, communal, “pluriversal” projects and enact a substantial paradigm shift from how technologies are developed and infrastructures are built. 

Drawing from a decolonial critique of the concept of “Universal” proper of Western philosophical traditions (Grosfoguel, 2017), Fernanda R. Rosa invites us to embrace the Zapatistas’ political vision, where multiple worlds coexist and a hegemonic cosmology is just one of the many (Mignolo, 2018). 

Rosa’s espousal of a pluriversal approach accounts for all beings, moving beyond not only Western ontologies but crossing the boundaries of the human experience to embrace non-human actors. In practice, this means accounting for communitarian standpoints and embedding them into a shared understanding of the object of study. Her fieldwork in the Tseltal and Zapoteco communities in Mexico (Rosa, 2022) is exemplary, as it understands local internet interconnection infrastructure through a bottom-up approach and studies the emergence of shared networks, which are built locally and invisible in the traditional internet routing system. Shared networks thus defy the internet technical standards that see networks as owned by autonomous system operators; accounting for these systems as internet networks broadens the conventional spectrum of internet governance actors (ibid.) opening up novel possibilities for design and policy-making surrounding internet infrastructures. 

We could all become governance actors if we are capable of rethinking governance as a whole and enabling a multitude of voices in the conversation. It is imperative to remove the logic of monetization (among others) from the equation and counteract the worldviews imposed by a few powerful global actors. To begin with, we can welcome the transition toward a pluriversal, community-oriented internet where everyone, not corporations, decides the terms of our connectivity.

Author Bio

Veronica Fanzio holds a research master in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam and likes to delve into all that surrounds communications, glancing at the intersection between digital technologies and the public sphere. Currently a digital marketer in the educational sector, they analyse the impact of digital technologies on everyday life, with a focus on digital transformation and governance. Their research and writings revolve around promoting responsible, ecological, and equitable technologies. 

Works Cited

ALLIOUI, H., & Mourdi, Y. (2023). Unleashing the Potential of AI: Investigating Cutting-Edge Technologies That Are Transforming Businesses. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Data Science (IJCEDS), 3(2), 1–12. Retrieved from https://ijceds.com/ijceds/article/view/59 

Bersani, M. (2023). La rivoluzione della cura. Uscire dal capitalismo per avere un futuro. Edizioni Alegre. 

Grosfoguel, R. (2017 [2006]). Decolonizing Western universalisms: Decolonial pluri-versalism from Aime Cesaire to the Zapatistas. In J. M. Paraskeva (Ed.), Towards a just curriculum theory: The epistemicide (1st ed., pp. 147–164). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315146904-6. 

Jansen, F. & Thorne, M. (2024, October 15). Predatory Delay and Other Myths of “Sustainable AI”. AI Now Institute. https://ainowinstitute.org/publication/predatory-delay-and-other-myths-of-sustainable-ai

Lyman, E. (2024, April 30). Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors. The Equation. https://blog.ucsusa.org/edwin-lyman/five-things-the-nuclear-bros-dont-want-you-to-know-about-small-modular-reactors/ 

Mignolo, W. (2018). Foreword. On Pluriversality and Multipolarity. In Reiter, B. (Ed.), Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge. Duke University Press

Rosa, F. R. (2022). From Community Networks to Shared Networks: the Paths of Latin-Centric Indigenous Networks to a Pluriversal Internet. Information, Communication & Society, 26(11), 2326–2344. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085614  

Schmelzer, M., Vetter, A. & Vansintjan, A. (2022). The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism. Verso Books. 

van Wynsberghe, A. (2021). Sustainable AI: AI for sustainability and the sustainability of AI. AI Ethics 1, 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-021-00043-6

Platform research is a popular and rapidly expanding field, and as such, while much of the seminal platform scholarship comes from the Global North, we see an increase in case studies focused on other parts of the world (e.g. Mohat & Punathambekar 2019; Lin & De Kloet 2019; Steinberg et al. 2022; Zhang & Chen 2022). Through this expansion, platform scholars multiply frames of reference in understanding of platforms and how they work in different locales. However, when applying existing, Western platform theory to a locale without sufficiently taking into consideration the local economical, political, or cultural specificities of the place, this leads to the generalisation of the theory. With generalisation, I mean taking the now largely commonplace American and European platform theory, based on case studies on Western platforms, and applying it to a local case study outside of the Western sphere without considering the local specifics. To not generalise necessitates a methodological shift in how a lot of scholarship on platforms is being done today. It is important to note that it happens not because of ill intent or bad scholarship, but because the practice has unconsciously become enmeshed in the field. 

Following postcolonial theory, a popular move in many areas of media studies is provincialisation. Provincialising, following Dipesh Chakrabarty (2008), means abandoning the longstanding notion of the Europe (and in the case of platform studies in particular, the rest of the Global North) as the standard-bearer of universal values and knowledge production and recognising the specificity of a particular region. As scholars, we have to be mindful that Western knowledge and values may not apply in other local contexts, just as knowledge and values from other local contexts may not apply in the West. Above all, provincialising Europe means abandoning the idea that the West is superior to other parts of the world. In this article, however, I would also like to warn against the shortcomings of provincialisation, and how it could lead to fragmentation, and eventually stagnation, in the field of platform studies. 

Inadequately engaging with existing platform scholarship in case studies in the Global South is detrimental to our understanding of platforms, leading to fragmentation, and eventually stagnation, in the field. Platform scholarship in different locales should always be in conversation with each other to learn from both differences and similarities, leading to a more complete understanding of platforms. While I underwrite the importance of multiplying our frames of reference about platforms and their workings in the Global South, we must do so while amplifying the field as a whole. 

Let me be clear, I do not seek to attack the practice of provincialisation outright. Rightly so, it is a move underwritten and adopted by many scholars, and has a rich tradition in important postcolonial theory, which I will outline later. However, I do wish to warn against the problems that could arise when provincialising is done too carelessly. In this article, I seek to outline both the need for provincialisation over generalisation, as well as illustrating where provincialisation could become problematic. After doing so, I will exemplify my points by looking at a case study that, in my opinion, threads the needle between generalising and provincialising very well, opening the door to productive, decolonial platform scholarship. 

The Pitfalls of Generalising 

Most, if not all, academic fields are deeply rooted in Western traditions and language. As Chakrabarty notes, postcolonial thinking (and by extension decolonial thinking) itself exists because the fields of social sciences and humanities originated in Europe and have spread into other local academic contexts elsewhere. But when studying a new locale, the traditions enmeshed in the field, ranging from lexicon, methods, or preconceived conceptions, might not apply there because of cultural or practical reasons. Thus, postcolonial thinking urges us to be mindful of this Western bias and actively work to undo this bias where appropriate. Kuan-Hsing Chen writes about this in regards to Asia studies. “In the past, this field [Asia studies] was seen as having been largely constituted by studies done outside the geographical site of Asia, mainly in the United States and Europe. The emerging phenomenon of Asian studies in Asia seems to suggest that the reintegration of Asia requires a different sort of knowledge production.” (2010, p. 2) Thus, as academic fields move to cover more of the globe, our research practices should reflect this, and not copy and paste the established Western ways. 

The difficulty of the postcolonial project lies in the fact that “European thought is at once both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the experiences of political modernity in non-Western nations,” We have to both work to make sense of the local context through the theory we have, as well as see where the theory is insufficient to describe the peculiarity of the locale. Hence, as Chakrabarty continues; “provincializing Europe becomes the task of exploring how [European] thought […] may be renewed from and for the margins.” (2008, p. 16) 

All case studies on platforms in a non-Western context are vulnerable to generalising platform theory. Looking at a global platform expanding in other locales is vulnerable to become an extension of platform capitalist theory, while in reality, the platform itself has to structurally adapt to the culture(s), legal and economical climates, and technical implications, such as a lack of bandwidth or internet access. In these kinds of case studies, we see an insufficient amount of engagement with these issues, because the theory is applied in its original, Western form. 

In a recent paper, Steinberg, Mukherjee & Zhang raise an example of how to deal with commonplace Western platform theory in a global setting. In their paper, they take Nick Srnicek’s framework of platform capitalism, which is widely recognised and appropriated within platform studies to interpret platforms’ economic workings, and propose a plurification of the term to platform capitalisms “as key to the epistemological shift needed to grasp the multiple effects of platformization on global cultural production” (p. 3). Because of the different workings of platform capitalism in different locales, Steinberg et al. argue speaking of platform capitalisms better covers the varying impact platforms have on different economies. 

However, generalisation is not limited to case studies of global platforms in local context. It can also take place when looking at a local platform in a local context. When looking at Chinese megaplatforms for example, it would be impossible to interpret them by only looking at established Western platform scholarship, as they flourish by virtue of China’s economical and political climate, but would not fit in Western climates outlined in Western platform scholarship. Here I would like to point out, however, that an influx of scholarship on Chinese platforms and platforms in China with regard to the relatively unique platform climate is noticeable within platform studies (e.g. Steinberg et al. 2022; Zhang & Chen 2022). So much so that Chinese platform theory is even used to generalise Asian platform studies as a whole, while the Asian continent is home to many different political, economical, and cultural climates irreconcilable with Chinese platform theory, much like it is with Western platform theory, and should be studied accordingly. It can be very othering to assume Western knowledge applies to other locales one to one. 

The problems with this generalising universalism also extend to our lexicon. With this, I mean that we should be mindful that different words or concepts mean different things, or have different connotations in other local contexts. Economic growth in Western late capitalist societies is built upon the exploitation of labour and resources in countries in the Global South. Following Chakrabarty (2008, p. 9), the term “late” has a vastly different connotation when applied to low and middle income-countries, compared to the high-income beneficiaries of this exploitation. Platform studies deals with many sides of a locale, be it cultural, economic, or political. Therefore, it is especially important to be mindful of the implications of transferring existing Western concepts and definitions to other contexts without addressing the differences in its workings in its local context. After all, these concepts help us understand how a platform works upon society. If that working changes, then so must our understanding and use of the concept. 

Another pitfall of universalising platform theory is that many times, existing, maybe even outdated, platform studies literature is brought up and then not sufficiently scrutinised in light of the localised context. Oftentimes, a paper describes the studied platform and explains how it is a platform often accompanied by some form of definition from North-American or European scholarship (e.g. Srnicek’s aforementioned platform capitalism). However, this does not contribute to multiplying frames of references and is counterproductive to the development of platform studies in a global context. It would be much more interesting and productive to scrutinise and challenge these existing definitions. 

Explain why the studied platform according to your chosen definition(s), but more importantly how it challenges established definitions because of its local specificities. In doing this, you further platform scholarship by documenting what the term platform can mean and how they operate differently in a different local context, multiplying frames of reference. 

Is Provincialising the Solution? 

Recently the field of platform studies, and academia as a whole, has become more mindful of this bias towards Western knowledge. Decolonial theory is starting to appear in many fields, changing the way research is conducted and theory is applied. Deriving from the postcolonial tradition, which was (and continues to be) a project of studying the impact of European colonialism in previously colonised regions, decolonial thinking argues that colonial structures of dominance, oppression, and exploitation still remain, even after independence, and works towards solutions that acknowledge and undo these structures (Yat 2021).  

In his book The Darker Sider of Western Modernity Walter Mignolo argues the principles of coloniality persist in Western modernity. The premise of Western modernity is that it is superior to the status quo of countries in the Global South, who should conform to our idea of modernity and the ideas that pertain to it. This includes the theories of the economic and cultural implications of platforms, but as we have seen, in reality, platforms function differently in those locales from the way they work in the West. Therefore, by generalising and glossing over those differences when we apply Western platform theory to other locales one on one, we contribute to this project of modernity, while we should instead seek out the differences and critically re-evaluate the structures of power embedded in our theories. 

Provincialising is an important practice stemming from postcolonial thinking. As illustrated in the introduction of this piece, provincialising the West means ceasing to take the values and knowledge stemming from the Western sphere as leading and instead looking at them as specific to that “province” (that region, be it Europe, the US, North America, etc.). In platform studies, this means studying platforms in their local context and not blindly applying Western or Chinese platform logic to them like I have described above. This way, it looks like provincialising is the relatively simple answer to generalising platform theory. If we study platforms in their local context, free from preconceived and generalised knowledge claims of Western of Chinese platform scholarship, we cannot only come up with new ideas on platforms themselves, but also how they intersect with cultural production in that specific context. We can multiply frames of reference and get a better understanding of how platforms affect different locales. 

Not only are platforms affected by differences in locales, its users may be impacted by platforms differently from region to region. We also see users develop different practices in how a platform is used that fits better with and is specific to the local context. Issues related to platform theory such as precarity and entrepreneurship can mean very different things in different regions. While becoming a content creator on YouTube or a neo-craftworker selling their handiwork on Etsy might be a respectable in Western parts of the world, while such a career could be looked down upon in other parts of the world. Being aware of these differences and describing how they influence platform workings, as well as how they influence how users use platforms, is valuable for the field of platform studies as a whole. 

The Pitfalls of Provincialising 

However, as I have warned in the beginning of this article, provincialising itself, and the ensuing focus on regional studies, is not without its own pitfalls either, namely the possibility for fragmentation and, in turn, stagnation in the field. As I noted, Chakrabarty himself is privy to this when he writes it “is impossible to think of anywhere in the world without invoking certain categories and concepts, the genealogies of which go deep into the intellectual and even theological traditions of Europe” (2008, p. 4). While the increasing focus on the Global South is an important move in multiplying our frames of reference on platforms, what can happen is that researchers consider a local case study so separate from existing platform scholarship, they might not sufficiently engage with existing platform theory. When this happens, provincialising is equally counterproductive to the furthering of platform studies as generalisation because it positions the research so far away from the larger discourse that it is no longer in conversation with it. Instead, it could be a valuable addition to the discourse, creating new platform theory on top of the existing theory, not separate from it, and thus lead to a more productive multiplication of frames of reference. Just like generalising, it might be just as othering to the locale of the case study to consider it so different or in isolation from existing platform theory to the point that it does not apply. 

It would be more productive to adopt an approach that both acknowledges the work done in Western platform scholarship, as well as addressing the discrepancies where the theory does not apply to the local context. This produces knowledge the rest of the field can build on, updating existing definitions, methods, and results in a way that does justice to the local contexts and chips away at the dominant position of Western platform theory, without fragmentising the field itself. 

Case Study 

Let me illustrate my points by looking at a case study. In 2019, Jian Lin and Jeroen de Kloet published a paper on the platformization of cultural production in China with a specific focus on Kuaishou, a Chinese short form video platform akin to TikTok, but with a focus on rural youth. While China’s platform infrastructure has been documented at length, the focus on this often disadvantaged group, whom Kuaishou enables to monetise their creative talents, something which might not be possible for many in the Chinese countryside as opposed to those living in cities. 

The article starts with an overview of Western theories on platform labour, and then immediately contextualises how these theories work differently in the unique Chinese climate, where the state is very much intertwined with economics and commerce, especially in the digital realm (2019, p. 4). The Cyberspace Affairs Commission is covered, a bespoke Chinese governmental ethics organ that keeps an eye on the content on platforms in China. Circumstances like these are important to the way platforms operate and are used in a locale, but, as illustrated here, Western platform theory can still be applied, albeit with care and attention to the contextual differences. Lin and De Kloet make their project clear from the outset: ”We distance ourselves from viewing digital labour solely in terms of exploitation and precarity” (2019, p. 2). What they reject here is the notion in Western platform scholarship where digital labour is viewed as something to be weary of. In the case of Kuaishou, however, the authors see that the platform creates a creative environment for young people living in rural places where cultural expression is not always appreciated. On top of this, they see these creative efforts being rewarded monetarily. So on the one hand, Lin and De Kloet work with Western understandings of platforms and platform labour, but acknowledge where these understandings fall short. Platform labour, at least on Kuaishou, does not have to be precarious as we know it to be in the West, precisely because of its workings in a local cultural and economical context. 

Conclusion 

As I stated in the introduction, I do not wish to critique provincialisation in general. Is is an important move in many academic fields underwritten by many notable decolonical scholars. 

Moreover, what happens when we fail to provincialise and blindly take existing, Western platform scholarship as true in any local context, the field fails to further itself. 

But as I illustrated, provinicialisation has its dangers, too. I invite you to be critical of Western platform theory, but not fall into scepticism. It is perfectly fine to disagree with it or find it inadequately applicable to your case study, but placing your research outside of the existing discourse, fragmentation and eventually stagnation may appear, which does not contribute to the decolonialisation of platform studies. 

Let me end on a quote from a decolonial manifesto by Nicholas Mirzoeff and Jack Halberstam that captures my point precisely, but in more polemic terms. “Read the masters and the enslaved; learn from both. Learn the tradition you seek to oppose; know the master you seek to overthrow.” In our quest to decolonise platform studies, let us not lose sight of the work already done. Multiply the frames of reference in the field, but also amplify it as a whole. Learn where its shortcomings lie and fill in those gaps in the knowledge, without dismissing it outright. Stay curious. 

Author Bio

Max van Veen is a research master’s student and teaching assistant in the department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include online sexuality and gender representation, disinformation, and the materiality of media and how it influences the behaviour of its users and consumers. 

Works Cited

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2008. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press. 

Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as method. Duke University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/ 10.1215/9780822391692. 

Lin, Jian, en Jeroen De Kloet. 2019. “Platformization of the unlikely creative class: Kuaishou and Chinese digital cultural production”. Social media and society 5 (4): 205630511988343. https:// doi.org/10.1177/2056305119883430. 

Him, Yat. 2021. “Decolonial? Postcolonial? What Does It Mean to ‘Decolonise Ourselves’? – Decolonising Modern Languages and Cultures”. 21 januari 2021. https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/ decolonisesml/2021/01/21/decolonial-postcolonial-what-does-it-mean-to-decolonise- ourselves/. 

Mignolo, Walter. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press. 

Mirzoeff, Nicholas, en Jack Halberstam. 2018. “Decolonize media: tactics, manifestos, histories”. 

Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 57 (4): 120–23. https://doi.org/10.1353/ cj.2018.0054. 

Mohan, Sriram, and Aswin Punathambekar. 2018. “Localizing YouTube: Language, Cultural Regions, and Digital Platforms.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 22 (3): 317–33. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1367877918794681. 

Steinberg, Marc, Rahul Mukherjee, en Aswin Punathambekar. 2022. “Media power in digital Asia: super apps and megacorps”. Media, Culture & Society 44 (8): 1405–19. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/01634437221127805. 

Steinberg, M., Zhang, L., & Mukherjee, R. (2024). Platform capitalisms and platform cultures. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231223544 

Srnicek, Nick. 2017. Platform Capitalism. Boston: Polity. 

Zhang, Lin, en Julie Yujie Chen. 2022. “A regional and historical approach to platform capitalism: the cases of Alibaba and Tencent”. Media, Culture & Society 44 (8): 1454–72. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/01634437221127796. 

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, disinformation has reached unprecedented proportions, posing a number of challenges to societies worldwide. Many nation-states have taken measures to combat disinformation; however, the strategies and policies adopted to address this issue differ in each region of the world. Encountering disinformation myself made me think about the lack of local news outlets and my use and reliance on social media platforms. Local news outlets serve as information sources for local communities about developments that directly impact them. At the same time, the rise of social media platforms worldwide has transformed the dynamics of information dissemination, offering speedy access to local and global news. But, while these platforms act as easily accessible sources of news, they have also become a breeding ground for disinformation. Marsden et. al. argue that fake news or disinformation “has recently become endemic to social networking on the Internet” (2). The rise of disinformation is highly interlinked with the fall of local news, especially during the global COVID-19 pandemic. “As local news sources have declined, a growing proportion of Americans are getting their news and other information from social media” (Ardia et. al., 21). Platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook have become a main source of gathering information. In their book Platforms and Cultural Production, Poell et. al. argue that US platform-based disinformation campaigns coincide with a decline of trust in legacy news organizations (198).

With the rise of social media platforms, the fall of local news, and the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been a number of strategies and measures put in place aimed at combating the issue of disinformation. These strategies, however, differ in each region of the world. The Global Digital Cultures conference and workshop were aimed at rethinking the existing platform research practices. In our tutorial Global Perspectives on Platforms and Cultural Production, we read selected chapters from Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2008), in which Dipesh Chakrabarty discusses that “provincializing Europe” is not “culture specific” (43). He argues that the narrative of “modernity” as we know it “points to a certain ‘Europe’ as the primary habitus of the modern” (43). As scholars, we cannot simply use the same lens of analysis when looking at vastly different regional case studies. As most scholarship on platforms focusses on North America and Europe, scholarship from other parts of the world is often dismissed. I would point out that even in the context of the European landscape, we can see a discrepancy in platform research between the West and East. This blog post will provide an overview of the different measures taken against disinformation in the non-EU Eastern European countries in comparison with the European Union and analyses the correlation between the fall of local news, the rise of platforms and the information disorders that come with these changes. Combating information disorders and the strategies employed to do so must be tailored based on the local political landscape. As scholars, focusing our research on regional disparities would provide a nuanced understanding of effective counter-disinformation strategies that accordingly resonate with the intricacies of each region.

Before we dive into an analysis of the different strategies used for combating this issue, we need to distinguish between the terms disinformation and misinformation. While these terms are often used interchangeably, Greene et. al. define disinformation as a “conscious attempt to encourage people to believe something that the producers and/or disseminators of the content know to be untrue” (11). Therefore, disinformation is intentional. Misinformation on the other hand is a continuation of disinformation as it refers to the unintentional spread of false information (Turčilo and Obrenović, 9). These concepts of misinformation, disinformation, as well as malinformation can be referred to as “information disorders” (Turčilo and Obrenović, 11). These definitions and frameworks will become particularly important when discussing the contemporary information landscape, which we can refer to as the post-truth era.  

The characteristics of the post-truth era would be “the distortion of the truth and the manipulation of the consent of ordinary people by political and economic elites, and the discrediting of the media and political opponents by accusing them of spreading disinformation and misleading the public” (Turčilo and Obrenović, 16). In the post-truth era, what is seen as truth is completely malleable. Personal beliefs are playing a big role in shaping public opinion. There are a number of actors that are producing and spreading disinformation, such as trolls, fake-news websites, conspiracy theorists, media outlets, politicians, foreign governments and more (Tucker et.al., 22). One might see fake news as purely an issue emerging from the fall of local news, the rise of platforms, or platform governance. However, the problem of fake news is also reflective of the public nation-state (dis)order. “Neither fake news nor post-truth is strictly about journalism; instead, it is indicative of fluid conditions in public communication across the globe that have destabilized modern assumptions about news and truth” (Waisbord, 3). Fake news, as Waisbord argues, is “symptomatic of the collapse of the old news order and the chaos of contemporary public communication” (3). The changing dynamics in the current state of public communication leaves me questioning who the producers of disinformation are. 

While foreign actors play a big role in the area of disinformation in the EU, Greene argues that “most of the producers and disseminators of disinformation–in the Western Balkans and around the world–are domestic and pursue local aims” (12). For example, Greene argues that the need for local politicians to preserve their reputation and justify the lack of measures imposed against the virus are some of the factors that motivated disinformation in the Western Balkans (41). “Most of these efforts sought to play down the level of threat posed by the virus in order to justify a lack of action on the part of the government” (Greene, 41). But what causes this process of information disorders and why is it more prominent in some areas over others? Greene argues that countries which are faced with internal conflicts, such as religious, regional, or ethnic conflicts are prone to disinformation (12). Like Waisbord, Greene sees fake news as symptoms of societal disorders and chaos. “Information disorder–including disinformation–is most often the symptom of social and political disorder, rather than the cause” (Greene, 12). This shows us that research on information disorders should not just be aimed at the role that digital platforms have in facilitating the spread of fake news or the measures they take, but also focus on the political context in which information disorders live.

The creation and spread of fake news can be regulated by the platform itself through creating new policies, moderating content, or reporting users. However, with the rise of platforms, nation-states and intergovernmental organizations have taken it upon themselves to tackle information disorders. For example, the EU launched a Code of Practice on Disinformation in October 2018 (Pamment, 8). Following this, in December 2018, the European Commission launched the Action Plan Against Disinformation (Pamment, 8). This plan would aid the EU in fighting disinformation by improving the process of detecting, analyzing and exposing disinformation in various EU institutions (Pamment, 8). Documents such as these are already a big step in combating the issue of disinformation on a European level. Marsden et.al. argue that “the most important European policy document dealing with disinformation was the result of policy formation in 2018” (3). While the European Union is implementing new strategies and tactics to counter disinformation, there are distinct challenges for non-EU Eastern European countries in their efforts to safeguard against the proliferation of disinformation. 

Sunter argues that “disinformation is an endemic phenomenon in the Western Balkans caused by internal factors”. On the other hand, Greene argues that “an unusual proportion of the disinformation campaigns at work in North Macedonia focus on international issues” (28). For example, rather than having a purely domestic agenda, information disorders in North Macedonia are focused on international matters. “Disinformation campaigns in North Macedonia that involve foreign relations focus overwhelmingly on issues of identity–whether the name change, or inter-ethnic relations–rather than on issues of integration or geopolitical allegiance” (Greene, 29). In North Macedonia, social media plays a vital role in the creation and spread of disinformation. However, traditional news outlets are still a prominent source of acquiring information. “Disinformation campaigns in North Macedonia tend to have important social media components–most prominently on Facebook, as well as YouTube and Twitter–but rely critically on traditional media…” (Greene, 30). From the countries in the region of the Western Balkans, Serbia is the most affected by foreign disinformation (Sunter). “The bulk of Serbian disinformation aims to shift opinions vis-à-vis elections, public figures or internal Serbian politics more broadly” (Greene, 31). Disinformation tactics therefore, are aimed towards shaping public opinions about domestic political issues. Tucker et. al. argue that politicians “create disinformation and/ or amplify disinformation from other sources” (5). Moreover, it is important to acknowledge the context in which politicians amplify disinformation. Greene argues that besides Russia’s Sputnik Serbia, “international actors play a relatively minor role in the Serbian disinformation landscape” (31). The spread of disinformation is focused on a few different topics. “Roughly a third of campaigns reviewed focus on NATO or the EU, a third on the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars and post-war ‘reconciliation’, and the rest on electoral politics and COVID-19” (Greene, 32). COVID-19 related disinformation has been used “to shift general public opinion, to exacerbate internal conflict, and to affect the image–positively or negatively–of political leaders” (Greene, 40). Disinformation does not just arise on social media platforms, but is rather inherently influenced by the nation-state.  

The ineffective strategies for tackling disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic have also affected the EU. “A lack of coherent policy—for example, in terms of supporting member states such as Italy that were exposed to the virus early on—contributed to an environment in which disinformation could spread more readily” (Pamment, 12). At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries in the EU were met with a lack of clear and cooperative policies required to deal with such an issue. In such periods of uncertainty there is an amplified need for more information. However, events such as a global pandemic create a perfect soil for the spread of disinformation. The issue of information disorders has been recognized on a global level with measures being taken by intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations. The project Sweet Victory is a behavioural science game, developed by the UN in order to build resilience against disinformation. The target audience for this game were UN officials and diplomats. However, the game can be accessed by anyone interested in behavioural science and international relations. Other ways to combat disinformation would be platform moderation, policy development, as well as fact checking. “There are two ways fact-checking is used: to monitor the veracity of political statements by leaders […], and to monitor the veracity of mass media content (mainly done by various NGOs)” (Turčilo and Obrenović, 29). In the Western Balkans, however, fact-checking “is reactive in nature and has a limited audience” (Sunter). In this region, there is a lack of consistency in monitoring online content and fack-checking does not reach a wider audience. Furthermore, many scholars also refer to the need for media literacy. “A media literate person understands the roles and functions of media in society and is able to critically evaluate media content and to interact with media, especially online media, in a mindful way” (Turčilo and Obrenović, 29). Media literacy is aimed at encouraging people to be critical of the contant they absorb, especially from social media platforms.  

As we have seen through the Global Digital Cultures conference, duplicating frames of analysis from one region to another is often not the most productive way to understand an issue. “Applying solutions based on practices from other parts of Europe is not sufficient” (Sunter). In regions that lack the infrastructure needed to combat disinformation, such as the Western Balkans, the challenge of disinformation cannot be effectively addressed by platforms or states in isolation. Instead, there is a demand for increased cooperation. As we have seen, fact-checking and moderation tools have its limitations. Therefore, without the state’s initiative to invest in fact-checking resources or promote media literacy the efforts of platforms are not sufficient to deal with information disorders.  

Author Bio

Stela Veta is a second year Research Master’s student in the department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Works Cited

Ardia, David et.al. “Addressing the Decline of Local News, Rise of Platforms, and Spread of Mis- and Disinformation Online: A Summary of Current Research and Policy Proposals” UNC Center for Media Law and Policy. December 22, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3765576  

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Chapter 1: Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History”. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. 27- 46. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691130019/provincializing-europe  

Greene, Samuel, et al. “Mapping Fake News and Disinformation in the Western Balkans and Identifying Ways to Effectively Counter Them.” Policy Department for External Relations. February, 2020. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EXPO_STU(2020)653621  

Marsden, Chris, Trisha Meyer, and Ian Brown. “Platform values and democratic elections: How can the law regulate digital disinformation?.” Computer law & security review 36. 2020. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S026736491930384X  

Pamment, James. “The EU’s Role in Fighting Disinformation: Taking Back the Initiative.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 2020. https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Pamment_-_Future_Threats.pdf  

Poell, Thomas, David B. Nieborg, David B. and Brooke Erin Duffy. “Conclusion: Power”. Platforms and Cultural Production. Polity Press, 2022. Pp. 179 – 200. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Platforms+and+Cultural+Production-p-9781509540501   

Sunter, Daniel. “Disinformation in the Western Balkans”. Nato Review. December, 2020. https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2020/12/21/disinformation-in-the-western-balkans/index.html  

Sweet Victory – A Game about Behavioural Science for Peace. United Nations. June 2022. https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k1kkljyqxn  

Tucker, Joshua A. et.al. “Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature”. March, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144139  

Turčilo, Lejla and Obrenović, Mladen. “A Companion to Democracy #3: Misinformation, Disinformation, Malinformation: Causes, Trends, and Their Influence on Democracy”. Heinrich Böll Foundation. August 2020. https://www.boell.de/en/2020/08/25/misinformation-disinformation-malinformation  

Waisbord, Silvo. “Truth is What Happens to News”. Journalism Studies, 19:13, 1866-1878, 2018. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1492881  

Introduction

Following narratives of the Silicon Valley, platforms have emerged as the harbingers of unity and waves of democratic movements. The umbrella movement or the Black Lives Matter protests, as an example, have often been quoted as showing how digital platforms play crucial roles in democratic movements (Agur & Frisch, 2019). Opposing this narrative, scholars and activist groups argue that social media companies, despite connecting the world, also reinforce colonial power structures (Couldry & Mejias, 2019). 

This blog post is going to unfold the colonization of the self through digital landscapes, navigated through the lens of e.g. Couldry and Mejias, as well as decoloniality scholars like Said (1978). I will delve deep into the narratives of how data is colonizing human life from two perspectives: the ongoing colonial practices against content moderators, but also against the end users of digital technologies. Following this, I will discuss how data sovereignty and algorithmic transparency might oppose such practices.  

Photo above: Facebook advertisement in India – “Make every day eventful” by e.g. organizing a hateful anti-Muslim mob (https://time.com/6112549/facebook-india-islamophobia-love-jihad/).

Digital platforms as colonizing architecture 

To better understand the dominance of global tech giants in our daily digital interactions, we must contextualize it in the broader framework of digital platform colonialism. In their analysis, Couldry and Mejias (2019), show a new form of dominance that extends far beyond mere commercial transactions. 

Couldry and Mejias draw disturbing parallels with historical colonization, which was marked by the seizing of land, bodies, and resources for capital gain. Data colonization, in their view, represents a new frontier where human life is extracted and quantified for value. They argue that most companies who are part of the digital web, particularly the ‘big five’ tech giants—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft—quantify social interaction for profiting. The primary purpose of their data collection and analytics is not to enhance user experience but to create predictable consumer patterns and integrate individuals into their vast data networks. However, Couldry and Mejias’s perspective diverges from that of some of their contemporaries. They eschew the notion of this trend as a modern capitalist innovation. Instead, they contend that it is a continuation of the capitalist modus operandi, which historically turned human activity into labor for profit. In this new era, life is not just lived but is transformed into data for economic exploitation.  

They are careful to distinguish between the explicit violence associated with traditional colonialism and the more subtle, yet still pervasive, nature of data colonization. While the latter may not manifest through overt violence, its impact—through surveillance, commodification, and marginalization—remains profoundly damaging. At the heart of Couldry and Mejias’s argument is the critique of ideologies that underpin data colonization. These ideologies, which misleadingly portray data as a natural resource ripe for extraction in the service of community building and democracy, need to be vigorously contested. Resistance involves more than just avoiding data extraction tools or creating alternative platforms; it requires dismantling the ideologies that legitimize such invasive practices. Looking forward, Couldry and Mejias advocate for a future that values human connection, solidarity, and authentic experiences above the ceaseless collection and analysis of data—a future where life is not merely reduced to a data point. While some might view these arguments as dystopian, Couldry and Mejias point out that traditional colonialism was of course more brutal. However, they want to show through their analysis that the underlying practices and strategies are rooted in the ideology of colonialism.   

Going beyond the average digital media user and Couldry and Mejias’ analysis, brutal colonization practices remain. An example are content moderators in Kenya. There, local workers are integrated into the digital economy not as participants with agency but as laborers performing tasks such as content moderation under strenuous conditions and for minimal pay. This dynamic is a modern iteration of the colonial exploitation where the labor of local populations is harnessed for the benefit of a distant elite, echoing the oppressive structures of the past. Furthermore, it shows how wide the colonial practices span. From extracting personal data to extracting labor in a colonial manner. 

Resources, labor and profits  

“If data is the new oil, then developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are the new oil fields (Dhwani Goel, 2021).” 

This idea, astutely noted by LSE alumni Dhwani Goel in 2021, delineates a digital landscape still ensnared by the chains of colonial structures. These structures, while mostly invisible, perpetuate a cycle of exploitation that favors the erstwhile imperialist, colonial powers such as the United States or European countries like Germany or the UK.  

The metaphorical oil fields of the digital age—former colonies, like India, Bolivia or Congo—have unwittingly morphed into massive reservoirs of digital data meticulously harvested and shipped off to Silicon Valley for processing and, ultimately, profiteering (Dhwani Goel, 2021). This dynamic doesn’t simply end with data. From the Coltan miners in Congo, content moderators in Kenya, to Lithium miners in Bolivia, a stark panorama of exploitation unfolds, where the fruit of labor is savored by companies firmly rooted in China, the US, and Europe. Therefore, ‘labor’ on digital platforms is as segregated as it used to be in times of colonialism. 

An example of this neo-colonial exploitation is the story of Daniel Motaung, a content moderator who found himself traumatized after working as a content moderator for Meta, cleaning Instagram and Facebook timelines for as little as $1,50 per day. Having to look at beheadings, child sexual exploitation and other horrific contents for many hours a day, he decided to organize his co-workers in a labor union for better pay and working conditions. As a consequence, he was fired and Meta even tried to stop Motaung from speaking by using a gag order, claiming that talking to the press could bias the case. 

Activism poster by https://peoplevsbig.tech/stop-facebook-from-silencing-whistleblower-daniel-motaung  

Such stories are not isolated, with parallels evident in Indonesia and the Philippines, where workers, ensnared in psychologically damaging tasks, are deprived of requisite help centers and social security nets, often spiraling into unseen traumas and untreated PTSD. Of course, the software engineers of silicon valley, making more than $200,000 a year, will not have to do such dirty work. “Moderation is not an ancillary aspect of what platforms do. It is essential, constitutional, definitional. Not only can platforms not survive without moderation, but they are also not platforms without it” (Gillespie, 2018, p.21). This necessary task, the backbone of the platform, is being outsourced to a former colony, reinforcing post-colonial structures where a white upper-class is becoming really rich by exploiting the cheap labor of Africans.  

Values, Domination, and Exclusion 

To add another theoretical scope to this analysis, Edward Said’s (1978) paradigm-shifting work Orientalism unleashed a critical lens which can clarify such colonizing practices.  The narratives, wherein the West perceives the Global South as an ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘uncivilized’ entity, can be seen within the strategies employed by the big five and its Chinese counterparts. There’s an altruistic guise, an agenda propelled under the mission to ‘connect’ and ‘uplift,’ which goes hand-in-hand with the exploitation of e.g. content moderators. Furthermore, there lurks a pursuit of unrestrained capital accumulation through emerging markets in the Global South.  

This observation becomes even more visible when we position Couldry and Mejias’ life colonization within the Saidian framework. Both frameworks lament the West’s reductionist view of the East or the Global South, often seen as landscapes ripe for extraction and influence, instead of as equal partners in a shared global narrative. While Said critiques the West’s entrenched tradition of perceiving the ‘Orient’ as an exotic, mysterious, and ‘backward’ land that necessitates ‘civilizing’, Couldry and Mejias offer a corollary in the digital realm. Today’s tech giants, in a sense, are the new ‘Orientalists’. Their mission to ‘connect’ and ‘uplift’ can be likened to the colonizers’ ‘White Man’s Burden’, a notion that it’s the duty of the West to improve the conditions of their ‘inferior’ colonial subjects. However, this modern-day colonization happens two-fold. It happens in former colonies, e.g. Kenya, and even goes deeper by colonizing human life through the distraction of data as valuable resources. The objective remains to tap into untouched markets, extract valuable resources (both data and monetary), and strengthen one’s global dominance.  

Following this, a connection can be drawn between the Orientalist painting tradition and the visual representation of digital platforms. Just as Orientalist paintings often presented an exoticized, distorted, and often eroticized version of the East to Western audiences, digital platforms present such a distorted image of their services. Marketing them as contributing to a more egalitarian society covers colonial practices in their production chain. Other well-known examples include coltan mining in Congo or the failure to moderate content in minority languages.   

Going beyond this, platforms like Netflix also shape and present narratives of the Global South in ways that are palatable and profitable to Western consumers. This is not just about representation; it’s about commodifying cultures, stories, and identities. The allure of such content might lead to increased viewership and subscribers, but at what cost? The nuanced, multifaceted realities of these regions are at risk of being drowned in a sea of stereotypes.  

In essence, much like how Said’s concept of orientalism illuminated the West’s problematic gaze upon the East, Couldry and Mejias’ theories (2019) unmask the digital age’s new form of orientalism, wherein tech giants are the artists, and their canvas is the cyberspace.   

Combining these narratives, global tech companies view human beings in previous colonial territories–but also in countries like the US–as opportune landscapes for trials and, above all, for amassing significant revenues.  

This cyberspace domination under the banner of “fostering global connections”  is not just economic; it’s also cultural and psychological, as the values and mechanisms of the tech entities redefine how we see personal data and to what extents such personal data could be extracted. Concluding from this, addressing data colonialism demands a multifaceted strategy.  

It is important to understand and resist the pervasive collection and commodification of our data and challenge the underpinning ideologies that facilitate it. It’s about redefining the narrative surrounding data from being a mere ‘resource’ to a reflection of individual and collective identities. Additionally, we must critically assess the unchecked surveillance by tech giants in alliance with state agencies, realizing that our historical experiences with exploitation and colonialism find new echoes in this digital age.  

Data Sovereignty and Algorithmic Transparency as possible strategies against data colonialism 

As outlined in this blog post, the main problem with digital colonialism remains two-fold: on the one hand, the capitalistic exploitation of workers remains, as the example of content moderators in Kenya has shown. On the other hand, the consumers of digital products are colonized as well. Improving labor rights in countries like Kenya and holding tech companies accountable for the minerals they process for their products, as well as the whole production process, is a major aspect that needs to be improved. For the simple idea of equality, laborers in all parts of the production chain should enjoy labor protection as profound as that which the programmers of Silicon Valley enjoy.   

Going beyond this and focusing on the arguments made by Couldry and Mejias, informed consent of the individual is a corner stone of getting agency over one’s data back to consumers. Therefore, data sovereignty emerges not just as a technical necessity but as a foundational principle for a decolonial digital approach. Data sovereignty goes beyond just having control over one’s data. It’s about recognizing data as an extension of oneself, one’s digital identity, and ensuring it’s not exploited. The GDPR, while a commendable effort, is a starting point. Real data sovereignty would mean that users have clear, unequivocal rights over their data, almost akin to rights one has over personal property.  

Therefore, platforms would have to radically reimagine their structures and functionalities. Users should be able to get a clear understanding of how their data is used–not hidden behind convoluted terms of service.   

Adding to this, endowing users with tools that allow them granular control over their data could enable them to purposefully choose which data to reveal. It should also lay in the user’s power to decide who or what is going to happen with their data and for what purposes. This vision demands not just technical innovations but a foundational shift in how platforms perceive and respect user data.  

In essence, data sovereignty, as highlighted by Couldry and Mejias, is a cornerstone in the larger project of digital decolonization. In their call for more just platforms, platforms shift from being extractive entities to becoming custodians that prioritize user agency and respect in the digital realm.  

Building on the premise of data colonialism, algorithms can be identified as contributing to such colonization practices.  

Gillespie’s “Custodians of the Internet,” work outlines how these algorithms, designed and deployed by dominant platforms, guide a significant portion of our digital experiences.   

More than just sorting and suggesting, they are powerful forces curating content that aligns with certain preferences, pushing narratives to the forefront, or relegating others to obscurity. How these algorithms function and what their underlying mathematical formulas are remains mostly hidden from users.   

Gillespie’s work provides a foundational understanding that algorithms are not just neutral lines of code but rather the backbone of colonial digital practices.   

By bearing the weight of decisions made by human designers, influenced by social, political, and economic considerations, algorithms’ functionalities include strategic choices, reflecting power dynamics reminiscent of historic colonial gatekeeping. The digital territories they govern are vast, stretching from social media feeds to news recommendations, shaping not just individual perceptions but also societal values and cultural narratives.  

This algorithmic hegemony needs to be confronted heads-on with transparency being the initial step. With policy makers, politicians and consumers having greater insights into the colonizing practices of big tech algorithms, they can take more informed steps to ensure fairer digital media. Adding to this, users could be given the ability to opt-out, challenge or adjust certain algorithmic determinations, allowing them a more direct role in shaping their digital worldviews.  

To conclude this thought, a truly decolonized digital space operates transparently and champions user agency, ensuring that the digital realm mirrors the rich tapestry of diverse voices and perspectives, rather than a monolithic narrative curated by a few.

Author Bio

Academic references  

Agur, C., & Frisch, N. (2019). Digital Disobedience and the Limits of Persuasion: Social Media Activism in Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement. Social Media + Society, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119827002 

Couldry, N., & Mejias, U. (2019). The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism. Stanford University Press. 

Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. Yale University Press. 

Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & Duffy, B. E. (2021). Platforms and Cultural Production (1st ed.). Wiley.  

Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books. 

The advent of new technologies and digital platforms has given way to a surge in gig contracts, and various forms of independent work. Although the majority of the platform workforce is composed of men, there has been a notable increase of women’s participation in platform work since 2000, with the growth rate among women surpassing that of men (Palagashvili & Suarez 2021). Considering this fact, it is surprising to discover that, while there has been a considerable focus on independent workers and the gig economy overall, there remains a gap in research when it comes to how women participate in this evolving labour market.

For this reason, I found particular interest in this year’s conference of the Global Digital Cultures research collective, titled Global Perspectives on Platforms, Labor & Social Reproduction. Among the many compelling ideas that were presented, the panel ‘Situating Gender and/in Platform Labor’ particularly inspired me as it offered alternative attempts to fill the above-mentioned gap through different researchers’ studies on various gendered experience in gig economy, with specific case studies from Indonesia, Brazil, India and Kenya among others. 

A panel that addresses this topic is important not only because of the underrepresentation of women gig workers, but also because even less research has been done in the Global South, outside of the Western context, an area that is crucial to explore in order to recalibrate platform labor research, which was also the aim of the conference.

As a contribution to this issue, in this blog post, I will first discuss and highlight some important findings of the Gender and Platform Work report, identifying challenges that women platform workers have to face, since only by starting with an understanding of these challenges can we realise how to ensure equitable treatment and safety. To gain insights from women in this field, I will discuss a study on women platform workers in Kenya. 

Having understood the typical challenges that women face and how platforms often institutionalise them, I will argue that, in a context where policies are slow to be put in place, women have had to find other ways to improve their working conditions. I will discuss the role of online groups as a form of resistance and collective empowerment for women in platform work. In essence, I argue that online groups should be recognized as platforms for solidarity and investigated as they could be used for opportunities of organising within the broader framework of the platform economy. 

Exploring the dynamics of these online spaces contributes to our understanding of how women navigate and negotiate their positions in the gig economy.

Platform work and gender

Precarity characterises employment statuses such as part-time employment, temporary work, zero-hour contracts, and contingent employment which don’t offer economic security (ILO, 2016). 

In comparison to the so-called conventional employment, these types of employment are associated with low pay, low predictability, limited social security and labor rights.

It is important to highlight that precarity displays significant gender inequalities. The widely recognised gender wage gap shows that women routinely earn less than men around the world. According to the ILO (2016): “The greater domestic and care responsibilities of women influence their choice of occupations, so that when they do participate in the labour market, they are often limited in the jobs that they can take on” (p. 119). Therefore, it appears that atypical employment is preferred by women as it allows for greater flexibility, making it supposedly simpler to balance work and personal commitments than full-time employment.

Platforms have facilitated increased access to precarious work. It has been noted that platform work has comparatively lower barriers to entry, the sign-up procedure is typically automated and, because it is considered ‘gig work,’ both platforms and employees have to make fewer commitments. Due to this, it is the favoured option for people who are barred from more formal types of employment, attracting workers who are already precarious and vulnerable (Fairwork 2023, 12).

The Fairwork project is based at the Oxford Internet Institute and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and through a global network of researchers, they conduct research on digital labour platforms and artificial intelligence. This year, they published the Gender and Platform Work report, which was based on the examination of the working conditions on online platforms developed during the last 5 years and in 38 countries, within over 190 unique platforms that connect individual service providers with consumers of the service through the platform interface. The ultimate goal of the report is to assess the working situation in order to give platforms suggestions on how to do better, to show that fairer jobs are possible. 

They used an intersectional lens, acknowledging that people’s race, caste, age, location and other demographic characteristics influence the experience of being a woman or a gender minority.

The report highlights that there is a recurring pattern where platforms operate under the assumption that their ideal worker is an autonomous, highly efficient, digitally savvy man that doesn’t have other obligations, such as family responsibilities. This ideal worker is perceived as primarily motivated by short-term gains and incentivised to follow predictable patterns of behaviour. This predictability is central to the platform economy’s ability to tap into a vast workforce of interchangeable individuals, managed by algorithms that precisely determine when and where to deploy them. Deviation from this ideal platform worker, whether due to factors such as gender, sexual orientation, or other socio-cultural characteristics, is largely overlooked, resulting in platforms that are essentially ‘gender blind’. In ignoring gender effectively, this approach ends up institutionalising obstacles that prevent women and gender minorities from participating and engaging in platform-based work. Consequently, it solidifies a gender-based divide in the kinds of work accessible to them. This inadvertently undermines the progress made in securing gender-related rights that have historically been safeguarded in conventional employment (5).

Building upon this, it becomes evident that platforms are either insufficiently responsive or plainly neglectful in addressing the challenges faced by women workers. In some instances, their actions exacerbate the existing issues. Having clarified the general gender-blind approach of platforms in the gig economy, it is imperative to gain insights from the experience of women and to delve into the specific challenges they face, to understand the disparities and vulnerabilities they encounter and to start thinking about why online groups might be specifically helpful for them.

Challenges for women platform workers

In the Fairwork report, key problematics have been identified, and to provide a more contextualized understanding of these challenges, I want to refer to a study conducted by Savita Bailur, Grace Natabaalo and Nasubo Ongoma, who presented it at the GDC conference. Gaining an understanding of the specific experiences of women working on platforms in different countries allows for a more nuanced perspective that goes beyond general trends and acknowledges that local contexts have a role in how platform work is perceived and carried out. Compared to women in the Global North, women in the South not only have less access to platforms, but they also gain less from using them (Faith and Banga 2021). It is important to remember that technology is not gender neutral and that women in the Global South are impacted differently by ongoing gaps in access. This underscores the need to avoid generalizing findings and concepts from the North to women workers in the South.

The study I’m referencing sheds light on the specific manifestations of these problems in Kenya, providing examples that fit with what the report has found. Firstly, it resulted that women are more likely to experience discrimination, violence and harassment while working. Due to the inherently unequal power dynamics of feminised work, platforms shouldn’t be remaining neutral, as they often do by positioning themselves as mere intermediaries connecting workers and clients. The extent of information disclosed by platforms to clients and workers, the commission rates and client fees they impose, and their policies regarding safety nets like insurance and social security, collectively contribute to either empowering workers within this context or indirectly facilitating their exploitation. Therefore, if no measures to guarantee fair working conditions are implemented, the workers are exposed to increased risks and are more susceptible to exploitation. On the other hand, even when platforms recognise the vulnerability of female workers, they often address it with protective measures, like permitting workers to select their clients’ gender or enabling them to leave a client’s location if they feel unsafe. These actions essentially promote and implement gender-based separation but may not necessarily enhance women’s safety, potentially limiting their income-earning prospects at the same time (Fairwork 2023,16). In addition, through these actions, platforms continue to reinforce the notion that the experience of female platform workers revolves around a lack of safety.

In the study in Kenya, women interviewed reported being sexually assaulted. Olivia, a delivery person based in Nairobi, said: “Some customers pretend that they are afraid of the motorbike, and they hold you and, in the process, they start caressing you. They take advantage and sexually assault you.” (Bailur et al. 2022, 35). She then decided not to ride again in the evening after 19:00 for fear of being physically assaulted. 

Another delivery rider said that a half-naked client wanted her to come inside his house to collect the money. Since she refused, she had to go back with the food to the point of dispatch. Since the order wasn’t completed, they charged her for it (35).

These anecdotes echo the broader concerns of the report. They exemplify how the platform economy’s gender-blind approach and the lack of adequate safeguards can expose women workers to dangerous situations and economic losses. Moreover, they make clear how the platforms’ ‘neutrality’ doesn’t provide security for women and it hinders instead their possibilities of earning money. 

As a second point, while platform work has been advertised by many as offering much greater flexibility for workers, employers and customers than traditional employment contracts, as “workers can supposedly choose what to do, how, when, where and for whom” (Woodcock & Graham, 2020), often this has turned out to not be the reality. In fact, many workers worry that if they don’t accept enough jobs their cancellation rate will be affected and, as a result, also their position in the platform and the amount of work they will be able to receive in the future. Additionally, since many platforms classify workers as self-employed, benefits such as maternity leave, sick leave and anti-discrimination regulations for protected categories are disregarded very often. Consequently, women and gender minority workers find themselves without an essential safety net, exacerbating gender-based disparities that arise due to the inflexible nature of platform work.

Considering the study in Kenya, we find that flexibility often means a “double shift” (Bailur 2022, 35), as many women reported that often they missed out on work because they weren’t online due to the fact that they had to manage the house at the same time. 

Women are often burdened with the expectation of balancing paid employment alongside domestic work, and in these situations flexibility becomes a double-edged sword. 

In order to analyse the situation in Kenya, the authors apply the Gender at Work framework (Gender at Work 2021), which states that change can be institutional/systemic or individual, and it can also be formal or informal. Under the framework, genuine empowerment of women can’t be achieved by just granting access to resources or enacting supportive laws and policies, but it also needs a dismantling of constraining normative beliefs that keep women in dependence and challenging the everyday institutions that perpetuate gender inequality. Considering this, they conclude that change has been slow not only regarding formal laws and policies but especially consciousness and informal norms. 

So, while policies are important to achieve empowerment, they highlight that social change outside the platform is crucial.

Building on the recognition of the challenges that women encounter in the platform workforce, I want to focus on their resourcefulness in improving their working conditions. As women struggle with the constraints of slowly enacted policies, the role of online groups becomes paramount. I argue that investigating the potential of online groups is a way to explore the active strategies employed by women in navigating and negotiating their positions within the ever-evolving gig economy. 

Online groups as a form of resistance

It has been recognised that online communication channels including social media groups, chats, and forums have been useful for generating demands, exchanging ideas, and organizing otherwise isolated workers, and that numerous of these initiatives have developed into grassroots organisations led by coworkers (ILO 2022). However, as it is the case in most research on the topic, the focus has mainly been Europe.

In another study about collective bargaining in the platform economy, data was included from respondents from ten different countries (Argentina, Chile, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco and Ukraine). Investigating in which form platform workers engage collectively, it was found that they mostly organised on Facebook, WhatsApp, or on other social media groups (ILO 2022). In both cases, no difference between men and women platform workers was taken into account. However, as we have seen, women often face a specific set of additional challenges related to platform work that platforms themselves fail to acknowledge. Therefore, I argue that there is a need to shift focus and conduct targeted research in this specific direction.

A great example of how women’s experiences should be researched further is given by the case study of women beauty workers in India, presented by Chiara Furtado at the GDC conference. In an article written together with Abhishek Sekharan and Ambika Tandon, she traces the history of collectivisation for women, finding that they disproportionately face barriers in organising, especially due to their concentration in sectors characterised by informality (Sekharan et al. 2022, 50). Because of that, they suffered a lack of legal recognition as workers.

Then, they illustrate how the barriers are even doubled in the platform economy due to continual non-recognition by the state and platforms, while “formal collective action is also constrained by the misclassification of platform workers as ‘independent contractors’” (51).

They also identify similar challenges to the one of the Fairwork report, such as lack of social security benefits, unclear employment status, being forced to keep a low cancellation rate and algorithmic control that can stratify workers based on ratings (52). 

Through the interview they conducted among women platform workers, they found that women use online groups to address the challenges they face. These groups function as central hubs of information exchange, where workers can ask questions and discuss various work-related policies. This includes topics like purchasing equipment, subscription fees, and deductions from their earnings. In many respects, these online communities play a vital role in addressing the information asymmetry and biases inherent in the platform economy. They provide a platform for workers to openly share concerns and seek resolutions to their issues. Additionally, these groups serve as extended networks of care and support, compensating for the absence of such support from the platform itself. (53) 

I want to argue that online groups in this case seem to provide a solution to the problem of isolation of women in platform work. In fact, it was noted in the Fairwork report that women often feel more vulnerable because they experience isolation at work as a result of their gender identity and examples are provided where male colleagues would discriminate against women and make them feel unwelcome and uncomfortable (Fairwork 2023, 19). 

This can reinforce disparities between male and female coworkers, since male workers share with each other tips on how to increase their earnings while women get left out, with a perpetuation of the gender divide within the platform work ecosystem as a result. (19)

Instead, as the case study in India exemplifies, women could use online groups to create a community they can rely on.

This is being further investigated by Gabriela Salomão, who presented at the GDC conference the research she is conducting on female platform drivers in Brazil. She found that women were using WhatsApp not only as a space to exchange information but also as a space where they could feel accepted, and that provides a sense of belonging. 

It is noteworthy that this kind of “antidote” for platform isolation relies on other platforms, such as WhatsApp and online groups. While platform work can perpetuate gender divides and isolation, these digital communities demonstrate the potential for empowerment and collective action within the platform economy.

While here I have discussed studies based in India and Brazil, given the relevance that it seems these groups could have as tools for workers to connect and organise, it would be interesting and productive to further investigate in different countries to assess if similar groups are adopted or to examine what ways women are finding to navigate the issues in the current and evolving platform economy.

Author Bio 

Sara Ungari is currently a student in the Research Master of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam specializing in Film Studies.

Literature 

Bailur, Savita, Grace Natabaalo, and Nasubo Ongoma. “The experience of women platform workers in Kenya” Global perspectives on women, work, and digital labour platforms (2022), 32-38.

Gender at Work (2021) Gender at work framework. Gender at Work. [online] Available at:  https://genderatwork.org/analytical-framework/ 

Fairwork (2023) Gender and Platform Work: Beyond Techno- solutionism. Oxford, United Kingdom; Berlin, Germany. 

Faith, Becky and Banga, Karishma, How Digitally Restructured Value Chains Are Reshaping Labor Futures for Women in the Global South (December 17, 2021).

ILO. (2022) New wine in old bottles: organizing and collective bargaining in the platform economy. 

ILO. (2016) Non-standard employment around the world: understanding challenges, shaping prospects.

ILO. (2022). Realizing the opportunities of the platform economy through freedom of association and collective bargaining (Working Paper No. 80). 

Palagashvili, Liya and Suarez, Paola, “Women as Independent Workers in the Gig Economy”. Mercatus Working Paper Series (March 29, 2021)

Sekharan, Abhishek, Chiara Furtado, and Ambika Tandon. “Gender and collective bargaining in the platform economy: experiences of on-demand beauty workers in India” Global perspectives on women, work, and digital labour platforms (2022), 48-55.

Woodcock, Jamie and Graham, Mark. The gig economy : a critical introduction.Cambridge, UK; Medford, Mass.: Polity Press, 2020.

The ‘Methodology’ section of published articles tends to present research as a smooth process, whereby investigators move neatly from research design, to data collection, analysis and finally ‘write it all up’. This blog post provides a ‘behind the scenes’ for our project, ‘Belong Anywhere: The Politics of Airbnb in Occupied Territories’. The project is funded through a GDC seed grant, and was also boosted through two Urban Lab apprenticeships, through the UvA Urban Studies masters.

The starting point for the project is Airbnb’s slogan: ‘belong anywhere’. Several studies have already questioned the extent to which the company lives up to this promise, highlighting widespread discrimination against potential guests from minorities and racialised groups. This research focuses primarily on cities in US and, to a lesser extent, Europe, and accepts Airbnb’s premise that it is indeed desirable for everyone to feel ‘at home’ during their travels. In historical Palestine, however, the question of who belongs where is arguably more fraught, as the claims that Jewish people ‘naturally’ belong has been leveraged by the Israeli state as justification for the Occupation and for exclusive political and civil rights based on religion and ethnicity. Our project, then, explores how Airbnb’s potential capacity to generate a sense of belonging plays out in this context.

Many studies on Airbnb rely on quantitative (spatial) analysis of listings to identify common patterns in the platform uptake and usage, as well as its impact on housing stock and rental prices. Alternatively, researchers have used interviews with guests or hosts to consider which social groups use the platform, how and why. By contrast, we were mostly interested in examining how people engage with Airbnb as a digital artefact: How do hosts communicate through the listings? How does the platform afford certain people the ability to belong in particular places through hosting? Our focus was thus on the meanings communicated through the listings themselves.

Our first idea was to use topic-modelling. Topic modelling is a statistical model of natural language processing, which identifies clusters of words that tend to co-occur in a given text corpus. This technique is more commonly used by businesses to automate data organisation, but it has also been used to examine, for example, Airbnb reviews. We were curious to see if topic modelling could be used to inductively generate initial codes for our listings or show us that certain topics were more prevalent in certain areas rather than others. What we had not considered is that large portions of any listing are rather mundane and generic, describing, for instance, the check-in procedures, or the availability of spare linen. Although it is standard practice in topic modelling to remove words from a corpus which don’t add much meaning and produce so-called noise, which drowns out meaningful word relations (such as ‘and’, ‘if’ and ‘the’), removing commonly occurring noisy words such as check-in or bedroom would significantly slim down our corpus. Thus, we came to realise that this kind of computational approach would not work very well for our type of texts. Mainly because it works best with larger textual databases and our corpus, as consisting of 21639 words in 164 listings (prior to removing noise), was not large enough to produce useful results from topic modelling. Therefore, we chose to go a different route through which we could qualitatively analyse the listings in a systematic way.

Figure 1: Our provisional coding schema

Next, we decided to perform a content analysis of the listings, using Yuval-Davis’ framework of belonging to develop a coding scheme. Yuval-Davis distinguishes between three levels: identities and attachments, social positions and values. The first level foregrounds the importance of collective as well as personal narratives for the construction of belonging; the second level hints at the existence of structural forces and power relations that are beyond one’s choice and control; finally, the third level points to the role of shared ethical and political values in defining who is accepted or not within a group. For each level, we developed a number of codes (Figure 1), and operational definitions for each code. For example, we decided that sentences through which a host shared information about themselves, their families and their reasons for hosting would be coded as Identities & Attachments | Personal Narratives. We performed two cycles of coding, examining 164 listings. Yuval-Davis’ framework gave us a lens through which to look at belonging, and consider different ways through which claims to belong can be made. What is more, this approach also allowed us to produce a good overview of common themes and trends within the listings, mitigating our biases. For example, we expected religious and national identities to be very present in the listings: coding helped us to see that in fact most listings contained almost no information in this vein. At the same time, we also found this coding approach quite limiting: on the one hand, we found that Yuval-Davis’ framework wasn’t always helpful for our case, and on the other hand we also noticed that, by directing our attention to particular paragraphs, this coding methods made it difficult to consider listings in their entirety.

We thus attempted to take a less structured but more holistic approach to the analysis, focusing on the interpretation of entire listings. We did this in a workshop setting, so that we could contribute our respective insights: knowledge of the region, knowledge of Airbnb as a platform, and knowledge of the specific dataset through the steps above. In this phase, we stepped away from our framework and coding scheme, and discussed each listing individually. This helped us to put words into context, consider the relations between sections in the listings, and notice contradictions and changes in tone; last but not least, this step also highlighted the importance of the photos included in the listings and their relation to the written text. This third approach proved very productive, but also time-consuming, to the point that we realised we need to significantly scale down our ambitions and lower the number of listings we will analyse.

And so, even though the road itself was not straight forward, we have ended up with an appropriate and effective methodological approach that is sensitive to our data’s specificities… By trying out different approaches and being reflexive we were able to better understand the characteristics of the texts and familiarise ourselves with them. This led finally to an overall approach comprising of multiple heterogeneous cycles of organisation and interpretation ranging from machine based to human methods of identifying patterns, specifics, and unique cases. Perhaps what this goes to show is that texts in digital space, specifically on a platform claiming universal belonging on geopolitically contested ground, create narratives which work on the reader and the context of their creation in complex ways which can’t be grasped with one method alone. More importantly, what becomes apparent is the fact that there is no one essence of a text or true meaning because each approach will give a different answer. Thus, when writing up a methods section for a research paper, in presenting a coherent journey, a lot of knowledge and insight is lost as the reader doesn’t gain access to the ‘behind the scenes’ and the trials of triangulation.

Author Bios

Jelke Bosma is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media Studies and the Centre for Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His PhD project looks into dynamics of value and place related to short-term rentals in Amsterdam and Berlin hosted on Airbnb. He has a background in urban studies and his research interests include platform urbanism, housing, and urban theory.

Alexandra Knight is a Research Master student in Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her current thesis topic combines social reproduction theory and abolition theory, providing a lens to study neighbourhood collective actions which aim to prevent youth from criminality in Stockholm and Rotterdam. Alexandra’s research interests surround meaning making processes and the impacts of neoliberalization on the socio-spatial complex that is the city.

Valentina Carraro is Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. Her research and teaching sit at the intersection of digital and political geography, with a focus on how digital technologies and practices reconfigure geopolitical relations.

Anyone who has ever visited Amsterdam must have noticed that the bike lanes seem to operate on an “Enjoy at your own risk!” principle. Although they are internationally admired for genius urban planning and their efficiency at reducing car usage and carbon emissions, the iconic red tarmac can be a feared battleground for tourists and unseasoned cyclists alike. Even those who commute by bike on a regular basis can most likely tell many stories of close calls in dodging pedestrians or nearly getting run over by a Thuisbezorgd rider or two. It is no longer cars that rule the roads of Amsterdam; the orange lightning brigade has taken over, powered by nothing but e-bikes and precarity. Yet, the same cyclists that clutch their hearts dramatically when a delivery rider overtakes them in ways that are most likely illegal, are often also the ones longingly staring out of the window with the Thuisbezorgd app opened, complaining that their midnight kapsalon menu met friet was supposed to arrive two minutes ago. What many customers do not realize about platform work is that riders for companies such as Uber Eats, Thuisbezorgd, Gorillas, or Flink are highly monitored and exposed to dangerous working conditions without a security net in sight. It might become more apparent if one keeps an eye out on the streets: the raggedy bags falling off riders’ shoulders, cracks in their phone screens, missing lights at night. If those are not obvious pointers to underlying issues, the many stickers posted on traffic lights might be. Usually glued at a biker’s eye level, at busy red-light crossings, they are an effective way to bring attention to the issue.

Figure 1 

Figure 2  

Investigating the Riders Rise Up sticker led me to a website of a “young, independent, grassroots union” specifically for delivery riders in the Netherlands. Their blog tells many firsthand stories by delivery riders, repeating the same complaints over and over again: malfunctioning equipment, failing brakes, wage penalties upon accidents, inhumane treatment. Especially concerning were the multiple reports about managers deleting concerns and comments about working conditions on their platforms of exchange, and monitoring rider’s engagement in unions. Rider Ömür Sönmez even reports getting fired due to sharing his story online and communicating his experience with fellow riders. It opens many questions and concerns about privacy, freedom of speech, and rights to unionize in platform work. But not all platform work is created equal – and not all platform workers are in equal positions of resistance and negotiation towards their income provider.  

In this context, platforms are understood as multisided markets, made up of “data infrastructures that facilitate, aggregate, monetize, and govern interactions between end-users and content and service providers” according to Poell, Nieborg and Duffy. Platform laborers can be categorized by their locality, which divides them into either online platform workers, such as online freelancers or content creators, or locally based platform workers, such as couriers or care workers. Each category comes with their own challenges in the labor market, and workers in the categories employ vastly different strategies in approaching resistance towards those challenges.  

I wish to draw attention to the asymmetries in how different platform workers deal with precarious circumstances and highlight possible modes of resistance, with specific focus on the Netherlands. After attending the 2023 conference on Global Perspectives on Platforms, Labor & Social Reproduction, as well as a related workshop in the same thematic scope in which articles were presented and discussed, I was confronted with countless research projects highlighting precarious labor situations. (Almost) everyone is precarious in this platform economy, from YouTubers and influencers across the globe, over remote and local (health)care providers to courier drivers and gamers. The precarities differ from situation to situation, but patterns can be discovered. Locally based platform workers may struggle with unjust working conditions, dependance on the platform systems such as rating systems, and the pressure of being replaceable. Online platform workers are often at the mercy of the platforms algorithm, have to work around censorship and avoid demonetization, and deal with opacity of payment and exposure systems. One key similarity is the atomized nature of these laborers. Both in locally based and online platform labor systems, communication primarily takes place between the worker, the client, and the platform. Platform workers are exposed to all kinds of uncertainties, but how do they deal with them, not just on an individual level, but collectively? While there are many stories of and research on individual cases, as well as collective actions platform workers have taken to go around certain issues, I want to pay specific attention to collective actions of resistance that address the platform provider itself. This article will focus primarily on the platform economy in the Netherlands as I am currently located there, allowing for a closer examination. I experienced the Covid-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, which caused a spike in both localized and online platform labor, but also exposed insecurities caused by it. 

Collective Action – A Hopeless Case?  

The global post-pandemic economy is plagued with high inflation rates and cost of living or housing crises, all while corporations boast about increasing profits. It is nothing new that employers have seen the (monetary) benefits of shorter contracts and low-commitment employment, but it seems that the pandemic has demonstrated that workers are able to do even more for even less. Laborers of many industries take to strikes and unionization, the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023 as just one notable example, and although this strategy of collective action does not always guarantee a successful improvement of working conditions for workers, it is one of the more effective ways to achieve change. It injures employers and companies where it hurts the most: profit and image. But union building relies heavily on communication, specifically communication that bypasses the employer in its the early stages. This is difficult to realize when it comes to platform labor, which is heavily atomized and individual. Without a coffee room or the smoker’s backyard, how do workers communicate unjust working conditions and how do they collectively organize?  

Inspired by the Riders Rise Up stickers across town, as well as the persistence of the SAG-AFTRA union members, I want to ask how this kind of organization comes to life in a Dutch context, and how effective it can be. How did the Thuisbezorg union start out, how do they organize, and to what extent does resistance reach employers? What about online platform workers that are located in the Netherlands? Is it possible to achieve an impact similar to that of physical protesting masses on the streets, in front of offices, in front of lawmakers?  

The answer to that question is a preliminary, careful yes. In the case of locally based platform work, and as the example of Radical Riders earlier demonstrated, one can find that resistance is indeed present. It is effective enough that it does reach employers, which is proven by their active combatting of union building and communication between workers. Of course, some creativity is necessary when dealing with isolated workers. Even if they do not directly interact in a shared workplace, working in the same area, or having connected social circles, tactics such as placing stickers strategically around Amsterdam are certainly effective options. It is successful too. So far, the rider’s union Radical Riders was able to negotiate for individual cases, such as rider Mustapha who crashed and injured himself due to a damaged bike. Important to note here is that the Radical Riders only received attention and compromise after they physically confronted the company at their office, walking in and demanding a conversation. This points toward the necessity of physical contact between employer and employee, and while this is possible due to the nature of locally based platform work, it translates differently to online platform work. Disconnected through individualized work as well as geographic location, collective action as the one mentioned above is made more difficult for them. Even preceding the action itself, building a union or establishing communication between the various individuals has its challenges. The following section will discuss actions online platform workers may take to collectivize in the face of unjust working conditions.  

What about the Online?  

Following the “adpocalypse” of YouTube in 2017, in which advertisements were algorithmically allocated to inappropriate videos, content creators took action quickly and founded the YouTubers Union (YTU) in response, marking one of the first acts of resistance across individualized and geographically removed online platform workers. While it successfully established the union and even reached YouTube, it made apparent that the atomized nature of online platform labor as well as the circumstances around it complicate workers’ ability to collectivize. Firstly, as the union was initially largely supported by content creators with a big reach, it resulted in a sort of dependency on their popularity. Furthermore, an online platform or communication tool is necessary to organize the workers that are strewn across the country, or even the globe. But as their main in- and output of information are usually the same platforms they use to promote their content, they run into the risk of “being discovered” and shut down by the platform’s moderation. Although platforms are usually denying this to be true, so called shadow-banning is a tool that is brought up often by content creators in the context of platform self-governance. It entails that creators experience a significant drop in engagement, sometimes as a consequence of posting something that is controversial but not outright banned by the platform. Especially minority groups have accused platforms of this practice, but it is not unlikely that the same tool is utilized to do damage control on possible union and community building, as well as image protection. 

There are also legal challenges, as content creators are not directly employed by a platform like YouTube, and are not contractually obligated to produce content. This also means that the platform has no obligation towards the content producers regarding sick pay, paid time off, and other securities a traditional employment contract entail. What category of laborer platform workers fall under, legally depends on locality, but they are often categorized as entrepreneurs or self-employed, which complicates union building fundamentally and questions their legitimacy on a legal level. Optional ways to work around this are the combining of unions, like German industrial union IG Metall unexpectedly opening their union to influencers and platform workers.  

Nevertheless, it is significantly more difficult to impact companies such as YouTube or other social media giants remotely than it is to target the office of a company providing locally based platform labor opportunities like delivery service Thuisbezorgd face-to-face. This is especially the case due to the overall lack of transparency about algorithmic structures, filter systems, ad allocation, and more. As companies are not required to share every update about their inner workings and have no obligation to the content creators they host, there is a constant chance that creator’s livelihood can be overturned. Accounts can be banned, systems to achieve high engagement rates rendered useless, and the threat of shadow banning looms over most creators. Still, they persevere. Companies are not entirely invulnerable. While direct striking might not be effective for online platform workers, threatening the image and perpetuating negative publicity has certainly shown to be a viable tactic. Additionally, influencers in the US for example are joining in with the SAG-AFTRA union, supporting the strikes in not reporting on or advertising any new media productions. It comes at the cost of uncertainty though, as even established creator Markiplier is not entirely sure what he is allowed and not allowed to do as a self-employed content creator. It seems that conversations and organization among platform workers are and will be necessary to continue resistance towards platforms and their unjust labor conditions.  

Opposing to the actions of online platform workers in Germany, the US, or Italy, there has been a lack of unionizing in the Netherlands. There may be multiple reasons for this. Amongst other things, unions have consistently reduced in size in the Netherlands, and are looking at less and less young members. Many young adults seem to not consider unions as an effective option, or fear that joining one may impact their work environment or employment status. If that is the average attitude toward unions, one may suggest that the atomized and individualized nature of online platform work paired with this lack of enthusiasm for union building may be a reason for the still missing union or mobilization of online platform workers in the Netherlands.  

Looking Forward 

Discussing collective action and its opportunities for platform workers, both locally based and online, have implications beyond the individual situations. It is necessary to perpetuate the knowledge that union building and striking are still options in an increasingly fragmented and individualized economy. Across industries, companies are cutting away at the security nets in place for workers, doing whatever it takes to keep their voices quiet in order to continue with exploitation. Situations differ naturally, but the core problem remains the same: whether it is broken brakes or broken recommender systems, the worker is left to deal with the consequences. That is why it is crucial to build a collective movement among workers with communal identification and their perception of themselves as a collective that can exercise power, one that allows them to face the representatives of the platform head on, physically or virtually. 

Ultimately, one needs to acknowledge that theory and practice are not always symmetric, especially in this case. I, and anyone who has ever worked before, am hyper aware that navigating precarious labor conditions and resisting injustice in workplaces is never as easily done as it is said. There are many reasons platforms who provide options of monetarization or act as employers are able to keep welcoming a steady stream of new laborers into their force despite the often well-known issues that come with working for them. But although there are countless obstacles when it comes to platform labor and unionizing, this relatively new and constantly evolving system also bears many opportunities to counter injustice and precarity in revolutionary ways. With changing conditions come new risks, but there is hope, too. Resistance is not dead, at least not yet. It has persisted through manipulation, exploitation, and strategic destruction of worker’s unions, and continues to find its (grass)roots. As long as workers are aware that they are the main contributor to a company’s profits, as long as they know that there is a limit to how disposable laborers are in the eye of an employer, as long as they seek out community among their colleagues, or even just keep their eyes and ears open around them, resistance can continue to be effective. It requires creativity, persistence, and a common goal, and although the fragmented platform economy complicates this, not all hope is lost. The Riders Rise Up movement and the successful SAG-AFTRA strike are just two examples of utilizing a communal identity and persistence in achieving improved working conditions. So while companies are actively working towards higher and higher profits, while simultaneously reducing responsibilities towards their employees to the legal minimum, one simply needs to remember that although corporations may seem impenetrable, they can be vulnerable to instabilities on the inside.  

Author Bio

Introduction

Regardless of whether I want to inform myself about the latest news, want to get home at night, or want to go on holiday to Spain, I use platforms like YouTube, Uber, or Airbnb. I would even call myself a platform-dependent person, as many probably would. With the increasing rate of consumers like myself, the number of laborers and cultural producers on platforms has also increased over the years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, when doing gig work from home became much more attractive. Those platform laborers and cultural producers started those jobs with the promise of more freedom, independence, and low entry barriers when working the platforms. Driven by a neoliberal agenda and the promise of being a free and successful entrepreneur. Because of this trend, the interest of researchers concerning the working conditions of platform-dependent work has also increased, leading to various publications concerning the precarity of platform labor and cultural production opposing this imaginary. (Duffy 2020; Duffy et al. 2021, Duffy et al. 2023; Poell et al. 2021). 

While there is a lot of research concerning the Anglo-American context of the precarity of platform labor and cultural production, there is less to be found from other perspectives (MUSZYŃSKI et al. 2022; Huang 2021), especially from the global South (Frey 2020, Mehta 2019). Therefore, I want to draw on some of the existing literature that uses the US as a point of reference concerning the precarity of platform labor and cultural production before discussing and problematizing the precarity of platform labor and cultural production from a global perspective. I am going to argue that when looking at the precarity of platform labor and cultural production, one cannot fall into the trap of universalizing the issue. For this last part, I will elaborate on conversations I had with Lorena Caminhas at the 2023 “Global Digital Culture (GDC)” Conference and the “Global Perspective on Platforms and Cultural Production” workshop. Lorena Caminhas is a postdoc of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sao Paulo. In the specific context of the precarity of platform labor and cultural production, her research about erotic-camming workers in Brazil caught my attention.

The workshop aimed to challenge universalism, provincialize US-focused research, and multiply the frames of reference concerning the research on platforms and cultural production. This includes an expansion of the geographies of theories by drawing on post-colonial studies and accounting for colonial historicity and local context. A greater interest was spent working with those theories to understand how a non-western place can be studied without ending in a deterministic Western view on specific sensible issues, and so account for the historicity and circumstances of the studied places. Therefore, I align my thoughts with Dipesh Chakrabarty’s‘Provincializing Europe’ (2009); he is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College at the University of Chicago. I want to extend this thought by not only rethinking Eurocentrism but also the Anglo-American-centered point of reference when it comes to the research on the precarity of platform labor and cultural production. This will include accounting for the socio-cultural and political dynamics of the regions that are being studied. I will argue that a localized approach is necessary when one wants to study the precarity of platform labor and cultural production, and we cannot just rely on US-focused literature about these issues. Moreover, some cases might even show that platform labor and cultural production can be viewed as an opportunity instead of just precarious work from these localized viewpoints. Yet, this can lead to the problem of cultural essentialism, which I will briefly discuss in the last section.

Neoliberalism and the Ever-Ongoing Competition of Platform-dependent Work

Before I turn towards localized viewpoints that see platform-based labor and cultural production as an opportunity instead of as precarious work, I want to draw on some existing literature and explain why this kind of work is considered precarious within the Western context. With its deep connection to neoliberalism, platform-dependent work can be described as individualized work. Therefore, every individual can be seen as an entrepreneur, investing in him or herself by accumulating views, likes, good ratings, or high rankings. This results in every individual competing against each other on the platform. With this ever-ongoing competition, some will lose. This is the precarity within neoliberalism that American political theorist and Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Wendy Brown describes in ‘Undoing the Demos’ (2015) as ‘no guarantee of life’ because when everybody works for themselves, some individuals become ‘sacrificiable’ for others. Although neoliberalism promises the freedom of each individual to invest in himself and creates the imagination of being a successful entrepreneur, the illusion ends when the high risks aren’t rewarded.

Concerning content creators on platforms, Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University, accounts for the promise of success in praxis with the term ‘aspirational labor’ (2017). Their investments of time, work, money, and other resources, aiming to be among the top-tier creators, have a high potential of not getting rewarded. Realistically, only a very small percentage will be able to achieve it, which makes the general experience of the work completely different compared to those who end up being successful. The devotion and entrepreneurial investment in their work does not lead to a substantial material reward. Even those who end up among the top-tier creators have to maintain their audience. This results in ongoing competition among content creators to gain and maintain visibility. This time-intensive work, that the American scholar Nancy Baym calls ‘relational labor’ (2018), never ends. The never-ending competition and the lack of proper working contracts driven by neoliberal market principles are what make platform-dependent work precarious. The uncertainty and insecurity of that work make it hard for laborers to plan ahead financially or when they will have holidays.

Precarity Due to the Technology of Platforms

Next to the neoliberal competition for visibility, other factors arise from the platform’s technologies and their governance that amplify the precarity of platform-dependent work. Under the term ‘algorithmic precarity’, Duffy describes the uncertainty and unpredictability of the recommendation systems of platforms (2020). If one’s content is shown or recommended by the platform, the reason for this is mostly not transparent. Further, some creators even described biases produced by the platform and its algorithms, resulting in inequalities. For example, black creators describe being less visible than others. Nonetheless, creators mostly have to live with produced inequalities on the platform. The creators try to make sense of those recommendation systems, leading to additional labor time spent to get a clue of how their algorithms might work, which Sophie Bishop, associate professor at the University of Leeds, calls ‘algorithmic gossip’ (2021). However, due to changes in those algorithms by the platform, creators can lose visibility, leading to more labor that has to go into understanding the new recommendation system. These algorithmic technologies, described as ‘black boxes,’ therefore amplify the precarity of creators on platforms.

These changes, next to newly implemented rules or affordances by the platform, are part of what Thomas Poell, David Nieborg, and Brooke Erin Duffy call ‘platform’s evolution’ (Poell et al. 2021). Any changes due to a platform’s evolution result in more labor that has to be spent to adapt and remain visible on the platform by the creators. Platform evolution, in the most extreme sense, can also lead to the abrupt disappearance of a platform. As in the case of the video-sharing platform Vine, its bankruptcy led to the platform going offline, leaving many creators behind and losing their audience and their primary source of income. To avoid being completely shut off from their audiences and increasing the risk of platform dependency, creators are active on multiple platforms to avoid this from happening. However, being present and active on multiple platforms comes with a drawback of even more labor that must be invested in maintaining their audiences (Poell et al. 2021). Therefore, a platform’s evolution can be considered one of the most precarious factors of platform-dependent work, making each laborer’s life more uncertain and unstable.

Precarity or Opportunity? The Case of Erotic Camming Workers in Brazil

With the elaborated baseline of why platform labor and cultural production can be understood as precarious, we have to account for where the research comes from and their point of reference. Moreover, we must pay attention to the socio-cultural, political and economic context of the region the research is focused on. In current research on the precarity of platform labor most interviews were held with US-based content creators and platform laborers (Duffy 2017; Duffy et al. 2021). Living in the US with a stronger GDP and a higher average income than ‘global south countries’ and a comparably much more stable economy, those platform laborers and cultural producers have a higher possibility of choosing a less precarious job outside the platform. This would lead to more stability and consistent payment, including regular yearly holidays for them. However, what does it look like, and how do we multiply our frames of reference, especially turning towards the ‘precarity’ of platform labor and cultural production in the global south? To do so, I want to draw on conversations I had at the GDC Conference and the workshop on ‘Global Perspectives on Platform Labor and Cultural Production’ in Amsterdam 2023.

During the conference and workshop days, I talked multiple times with Lorena Caminhas. We talked about the precarity of platform labor and cultural production following her research about online erotic camming platforms in Brazil. Her findings about the camming workers on those platforms caught my attention. Despite my previous knowledge and the existing literature on platform precarity, those workers don’t seem to view their position as precarious as one would assume. Instead, her interviews show that compared to other jobs in Brazil, such as a salesperson, waiting staff, freelance professional, escort, or work in the public sector, the work as an erotic camming worker is less precarious. Additionally, those camming workers view this platform work as high quality and autonomous. The main factors that she identified during her interviews are autonomy, stability, and safety. The free choice of when and where to work, also accounting for the duration of the work, gives those workers more freedom and autonomy than the formal, traditional, and informal labor they’ve done before. While being interviewed, the erotic camming workers described a better ‘labor standard’, resulting in regular and higher payments than their former jobs. A reason for that is the growing informalization of work and employment in Brazil, which the platforms take advantage of, as Caminhas told me. The erotic camming workers described a regular income flow if one obtained ‘exclusivity’ on the platform. Whereas getting paid in their former informal jobs can be challenging. But also, formal jobs are considered highly precarious due to the stratification present in the formal working sector in Brazil, especially when it comes to the workers’ ethnicity. Moreover, the interviewees in Lorena Caminhas’ research described being excluded or even rejected from other working sectors before working on the platform. Further, they said, they could earn more money than in their previous jobs and have to spend less time on the platform if they are ‘exclusive’. From the interviewees’ perspectives, the platform governance and the implemented rules and conditions set by the platforms lead to more stability within their work than the work they have done before. This makes them feel that contingencies are more under control while working on the platform instead of outside it. Next to the stability, the work was considered safer since the camming workers worked from home, and the platform assured privacy protection.

The ‘exclusivity’ that can be achieved on the platform leads to a regular income, giving them higher visibility but, more importantly, a fixed audience as regular and consistent customers. By obtaining exclusivity on the platform, their work seemed to gain more stability, making it in their eyes, less aspirational. Instead of the feeling of competing against all the other camming workers on the platform, they had regular customers waiting for their scheduled camming sessions. This led to less time that had to be invested into ‘relational labor’, since the scheduled sessions, in combination with regular customers, resulted in consistent visibility and, therefore, more stability. However, this is only the case for ‘exclusive’ creators. It is important to note that although the two black creators interviewed had obtained exclusivity, they were less successful than others. In their case, they earned as much as in their former jobs, but the stable income, more flexibility, and security in the case of one creator who got harassed at her previous hospitality job still made the camming job more preferable, as Lorena Caminhas’ research shows.

After obtaining exclusivity, the erotic camming workers did not have to focus on gaining visibility and had to understand the recommendation system of the platform due to algorithmic precarity. However, the ‘exclusivity’ feature makes them dependent on that one platform and further leads to immobility when finding alternative work. Although this could result in a precarious situation caused by the platform’s evolution, since the creators have to adapt to changes or lose all of their audience when the platform goes offline, it is not perceived as precarious. Instead, the creators trust the platform regarding its governance decisions and sustainability. However, especially in Lorena Caminhas’ research, specific issues leading to the precarity of platform labor and cultural production persist. Such is the lack of diversity; the few black camming workers described being less successful than others. The same occurred for older age camming workers. Although they were less successful, they still described working for the platform as a better opportunity than working in their previous jobs. Precarity, Caminhas she told me, is therefore contradictory due to its different subjective understanding by not only people in different countries but also of factors of age, race, and work experience.

My conversations with Lorena Caminhas showed me that to research platform precarity in the ‘global south,’ we have to account for the localized context of the country’s economic and political situation, which resulted from its historicity. What is viewed as precarious work in the Anglo-American context can sometimes be considered non-precarious work in other countries like Brazil when viewed from a localized perspective. The platform labor of camming workers was perceived as non-precarious work compared to the jobs they would have done outside of the platform. In the case of Brazil, we have to account for the dominance of neoliberalism throughout the country’s economy, not just on platform-dependent work. Traditional work in some sectors, as described, seems to be far more precarious following the factors of autonomy, stability, and safety. Therefore, even some precarious aspects described on those platforms were seen as ‘side effects’ due to the economic and political state of the country rather than the fault of the platforms; and so the labor on those platforms as erotic camming workers is experienced as a better choice of work than in other sectors. This seems to be the case because of the growing informalization of work in the country. This shows that in the case of erotic camming workers on platforms in Brazil, the platform labor is not perceived as precarious work but, instead, is seen as an opportunity to escape their more precarious former jobs.

This makes a universal frame of reference fundamentally problematic. Many different factors need to be accounted for. Therefore, the subjective experience of platform laborers needs a localized approach according to countries, but also needs to incorporate other issues such as age, race, and work experience, as described by Lorena Caminhas. However, it is essential to note that a different subjective account regarding precarity does not erase problems of platform labor that are viewed as precarious in other research. The local context, in this case, makes the precariousness of erotic camming work perceived as more controllable than in the creators’ former jobs.

But what exactly does it mean to account for a localized context, and how does it look in the context of platform precarity? I want to answer this question in the last section. 

What Now? A Call for Provincializing the Research?

Therefore, we have to turn toward post-colonial studies, which can give us essential hints for future research from a global perspective. But how can post-colonial studies and decolonial theory help us understand platform labor and cultural production if most platforms work across borders and have unified rules, functions, and working conditions?

In his work “Provincializing Europe : Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference,” Chakrabarty (2008) provides an approach that tries to stay with the trouble of political modernity that is persistent everywhere but arises from European thought and the history of Western domination. For Chakrabarty:

“European thought is at once both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the experiences of political modernity in non-Western nations, and provincializing Europe becomes the task of exploring how this thought—which is now everybody’s heritage and which affect us all— may be renewed from and for the margins.” (Chakrabarty 2008, p.16)

Instead of sticking with universalist European origin and centric thoughts, theories, and practices, he proposes diversifying other countries’ perspectives, historicities, and narratives. In this specific case, this means first accounting for the European understanding of the concept of modernity as a and not the point of reference. For Chakrabarty, it is essential, by representing non-European modernity, to account for the indispensable but also inadequate categories and strategies implied by the ‘West’. But in doing so, it is equally important to account for the politics of despair that results from the shared history that other countries and regions (in this case India) have with Europe. These include unequal power dynamics and the forced implementation of European modernity onto other countries, leading to “[…]ambivalences, contradictions and the use of force, and the tragedies and ironies that attend it” (Chakrabarty 2008, p.43) with the goal of seeing the world as ‘radically heterogeneous’. In doing so, he wants to move the European historicity and their theories and thoughts away from the center and sees them as one of many narratives. With this inclusive approach, he wants to represent non-European political modernity and move beyond Western and non-Western power dynamics.

Connecting to Chakrabarty’s thoughts, Chen (2010) proposes in “Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization” a way to overcome the present conditions of knowledge production. He is a critical theorist focused on inter-Asian Cultural Studies and recently retired as a Professor at the Graduate Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University. For Chen, “For the past few centuries, ‘the West as method’ has become the dominant condition of knowledge production” (Chen 2010 p. 216). Like Chakrabarty, Chen, whose research is focused on Asia, wants to move away from the European-centric narrative, especially in knowledge production, and to multiply the perspectives and frames of references. For him, knowledge production always accounts for the specific context and locality that influences a theory’s work. According to Chakrabarty and Chen, a European theory cannot account for the same results and conclusions within a non-European/‘non-Western’ context.

However, while paying attention to the local, it is crucial in our effort to provincialize the research to not fall into the trap of cultural essentialism. Although local contexts frame the research and in this case how precarity is perceived through the creator’s subjectivity, we don’t want to frame those research as an opposition to the existing research, like in ‘the west and the rest’. We must avoid unqualified cultural emphasis on the region by paying attention to the place. Within every culture, there are differences and asymmetric power dynamics between the people who live there. Ani Maitra, Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity; Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies of Colgate University and Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Duke University, argued for more attention to be paid to the asymmetric power dynamics due to the distribution of materials but also the differences in the identity of the people living in a country. In this case, they focused on Asian countries when talking about “New Media in Asia” and the problem of Western cultural essentialism displayed on Asia. There is a need to pay more attention to rural and urban regions: “[…] locality must be examined through the material and infrastructural differences between digital multiplicities, differences that separate the urban from the rural, and the urban privileged from the urban underprivileged” (Maitra & Chow 2016, p.21).

I, therefore, locate Chen’s account as a call for more specific localized theories moving away from the image of a general theory primarily invented in the Western context that tries to make sense of other different contexts. With a focus on Asia, for Chen, this could be achieved by looking at the differences between Asian countries and interreferencing between them and so constructing alternative frames of reference. Looking at the case study presented, we must account for their local contexts, historicities, and current conditions in Brazil. By including the previous Anglo-American-centered research on platform-dependent work and its precarity, but accounting for the local contexts by listening to those who live and work ‘in the local’, to say it in Chen’s words, we can expand the research towards a global perspective. Resulting in a multiplication of the frames of references but also moving beyond the European standards and still existing colonial and global south vs. global north power dynamics. In the end, although the work on platforms stays mostly the same in each country, the current local conditions and contexts determine if the work can be seen as precarious or an opportunity. This includes avoiding the trap of cultural essentialism by accounting for the heterogeneity of a studied place and its people. Therefore, we must listen to the localized individual experiences of those who work on the platforms. In the case of Lorena Caminhas’ research on erotic camming workers in Brazil, this also includes paying attention to the different identities and circumstances of the interviewees, like their ethnicities and age differences, which in this case can be the reason for a different experience on the platform. 

I hope to see more research like Lorena Caminhas’ work in the future to extend the research toward a global perspective. To move away from ‘global north’ vs. ‘global south’ power dynamics, universalism of research, and cultural essentialism in order to multiply the frames of references and provincialize, in this case, the Anglo-American-centered research, as we did in the workshop here in Amsterdam.

Author Bio

Bastian August is currently a research master’s student and teaching assistant coordinator in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He specializes in New Media and Digital Culture with a significant emphasis on platform studies, particularly the governance of platforms, the precarity of platform labor and cultural production, and unequal power dynamics on platforms.

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