Convergence, Ahead of Print.
This study analyses YouTube videos about delivery riders in Spain as well as the channels in which the videos were uploaded. The aim is to understand the ways that riders are represented in the videos and determine the labour imaginaries that emerge in the context of platformization, which includes work that depends on platforms that use computer architecture and automation systems to arrange exchanges between people, goods, and corporations, such as the work of delivery riders. This article shows how platformization of labour intersects with cultural production because delivery riders’ work has become a video theme in the YouTube platform. Moreover, in some cases riders (or aspiring ones) use YouTube and other social media to interact, share knowledge and organize their job. Based on a thematic analysis of delivery riders' YouTube videos (n = 40) from 26 channels mined with YouTube Data Tools, this study presents a typology of channels in which riders appear. It also categorizes the main representations of riders as well as the imaginaries that emerge about this type of labour in YouTube videos. The analysis indicates that delivery riders’ work has a transitory nature, which is expressed in the analysed videos. Moreover, the study demonstrates that immigrants are the people who tend to do this type of work in Spain, and shows how being an immigrant plays a particular role in the way riders are represented or gain their social conceptions and aspirations about this kind of work.
Author Archives: Fernanda Pires
What is so funny about platform labour in Brazil? Ride-hailing drivers’ use of humour and memes on Facebook groups
Convergence, Ahead of Print.
In this article, we focused on data drawn from two Brazilian Facebook groups that discuss on-demand driving (Uber and 99Pop). We focus particularly on the use of humour in the stories that on-demand drivers (ride-hailing) share, as it was identified that humour is widely used within these groups. This article has three objectives: (1) to detect the types of stories shared by on-demand drivers in the Facebook groups; (2) to determine the relationships these stories have with the work of on-demand driving; and (3) to understand the dimensions of professional identity and negotiation of platform labour conditions. Therefore, three dimensions of the stories shared by on-demand drivers were identified: the relationships they establish with their clients, their relationships with the platforms (the affordances and limitations the platforms provide and represent), and the everyday work relationships among the drivers developed by establishing Facebook as a digital workspace. These dimensions lead to the formation and negotiation of their professional identity and reveal how they deal with precarity through humour.
In this article, we focused on data drawn from two Brazilian Facebook groups that discuss on-demand driving (Uber and 99Pop). We focus particularly on the use of humour in the stories that on-demand drivers (ride-hailing) share, as it was identified that humour is widely used within these groups. This article has three objectives: (1) to detect the types of stories shared by on-demand drivers in the Facebook groups; (2) to determine the relationships these stories have with the work of on-demand driving; and (3) to understand the dimensions of professional identity and negotiation of platform labour conditions. Therefore, three dimensions of the stories shared by on-demand drivers were identified: the relationships they establish with their clients, their relationships with the platforms (the affordances and limitations the platforms provide and represent), and the everyday work relationships among the drivers developed by establishing Facebook as a digital workspace. These dimensions lead to the formation and negotiation of their professional identity and reveal how they deal with precarity through humour.