Making platforms work: relationship labor and the management of publics

Abstract

How do digital platforms govern their users? Existing studies, with their focus on impersonal and procedural modes of governance, have largely neglected to examine the human labor through which platform companies attempt to elicit the consent of their users. This study describes the relationship labor that is systematically excised from many platforms' accounts of what they do and missing from much of the scholarship on platform governance. Relationship labor is carried out by agents of platform companies who engage in interpersonal communications with a platform's users in an effort to align diverse users' activities and preferences with the company's interests. The authors draw on ethnographic research conducted at AllDone (a for-profit startup that built an online market for local services) and edX (a non-profit startup that partnered with institutions to offer Massive Open Online Courses). The findings leverage variation in organizational contexts to elaborate the common practices and divergent strategies of relationship labor deployed by each platform. Both platforms relied on relationship workers to engage in account management practices aimed at addressing the particular concerns of individual users through interpersonal communications. Relationship workers in each setting also engaged in community management practices that facilitated contact and collaboration among users in pursuit of shared goals. However, our findings show that the relative frequency of relationship workers' use of account management and community management practices varies with organizational conditions. This difference in strategies also corresponded to different ways of valuing relationship workers and incorporating them into organizational processes. The article demonstrates how variation in organizational context accounts for divergent strategies for governing user participation in digital platforms, and for the particular processes through which governance is accomplished and contested.

Artificial intelligence, algorithms, and social inequality: Sociological contributions to contemporary debates

“…While macro‐level social theories provide analytic tools for global transformations, sociologists can attend to the production of power and knowledge through genealogies (Denton et al., 2021) and ethnographies of AI research (Hoffman, 2021; Jaton, 2021). There will also be continuing value in producing ethnographies (and institutional ethnographies, James & Whelan, 2021) of organizations implementing algorithmic systems (Bailey et al., 2020; Brayne & Christin, 2021; Cruz, 2020; Shestakofsky & Kelkar, 2020), as well as studies into the experiences of people who are further ‘downstream’, interacting with algorithmic systems (Christin, 2020; Noble, 2018). Roberge and Castelle (2021) argue that we need an ‘end‐to‐end sociology’ of AI, investigating how these ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ processes are entangled, and tracing these sociotechnical systems ‘from genesis to impact and back again’ (Roberge & Castelle, 2021, p. 3).…”

How algorithmic management influences worker motivation: A self-determination theory perspective.

“…The perceived reliability of system features also influences the impact of algorithmic management (Evans & Kitchin, 2018; Kang et al, 2020; Reyes, 2018; Shestakofsky & Kelkar, 2020; Van Oort, 2018; Wiblen & Marler, 2021). Indeed, system failures and equipment problems may lead to frustration in workers (Evans & Kitchin, 2018), and ultimately feelings of incompetence.…”

Platform capitalism’s social contract

“…More specifically, they rely on the unwaged labour of a relatively large and revolving group of mostly young female interns, who create the conditions of possibility for the startup's success. Growing both sides of the platform's volunteering marketplace requires significant amounts of "relationship labor" (Shestakofsky and Kelkar, 2020) in the form of promotional activities and targeted user "acquisition", which is to a large extent done by interns "writing blog posts and engaging in online ' community management' , as well as searching and recruiting new organisations via e-mail and telephone" (Mos, 2021, p. 325). Moreover, these young women also respond to user queries via the platform's helpdesk, while serving as its public face in promotional photographs accompanying blogs and social media posts (ibid.).…”