From technological disruption to political mobilization: an approach to social protest on lean platforms

Abstract

In order to carry out a first approach to the dynamics of political mobilization associated with the arrival and consolidation of digital platforms in national contexts, this article seeks to characterize the field of protest against lean platforms, in terms of the repertoires, demands and modalities of collective action, this from the construction of a database for the case of Costa Rica under the methodology of Protest Event Analysis (PEA) and Political Claims Analysis (PCA). The results of the descriptive statistical analysis allow us to observe that the contentious dynamics has gone from being totally dominated by the traditional taxi driver sector, to showing the entry of new actors such as platform workers and some civil society groups that have come to complicate the panorama of action for the Costa Rican government in terms of regulation and, therefore, to incorporate new demands and decision arenas within the political-social field.