Precarious Participants, Online Labour Platforms and the Academic Mode of Production: Examining Gigified Research Participation

Abstract

In an economic environment defined by precarious and gig-based labour contracts, academic research has been reimagined as a source of income for research participants. In addition, with the rise of online labour platforms, researchers have turned to online labour platforms as a solution to the increasing difficulty in recruitment of participants in research. This present context makes explicit the hidden labour that research participants have always done in the production of research outputs within academia. This paper develops a Marxist lens through which we can understand the material conditions of the circulation of capital through academia and the role of research participants in this mode of production. By developing this broad analytical framework for the academic mode of production, this paper further argues that our present economic epoch of the gig economy and specifically the use of digital labour platforms for academic research, has accelerated the subsumption of research participation as a source of income through the fragmentation of work and the gigification of everyday life.

EdTech-mediated outsourcing and casualisation of academic labour

“…In addition, there are platforms that operate in the same way as those mediating 'gig work' in the food delivery or individual transport sectors, but specifically for academic labour. Through UpWork, for example, individual academics can be subcontracted to conduct task-based research; tutors can be sourced through platforms like PrepLy; research participants can be recruited and paid via Amazon Mechanical Turk (see McKenzie, 2023), while students can hire ghostwriters to complete their essays and dissertations through various platforms operating as 'essay-' or 'diploma mills' . Not only university managers but in some cases academic staff and also students outsource their work via digital apps, a trend most recently manifested in the quick uptake of ChatGPT.…”

“…These research questions also come with conceptual and methodological challenges: How do we identify and reach these workers? Precarious academics experience time poverty and participating in other academics' research constitutes unpaid labour, ultimately for the benefit of the lead researchers (O'Keefe & Courtois, forthcoming; Papoulias & Callard, 2022); and those working through platforms have even less time to spare (McKenzie, 2023). A fourth question is, how can we research these workers in a way that does not further their exploitation?…”

“…This trend was recently referred to as the 'gig academy' (Kezar et al, 2019;Martínez Guillem & Briziarelli, 2020) in reference to the 'gig economy' , a term that describes a labour market characterised by short-term, on-call freelance work rather than by full-time salaried work. The emerging scholarship on educational technology (EdTech) and digital labour in academia analyses how new audit and surveillance regimes, the marketisation of HE and the rise of task-based research amplify exploitation and reshape academic identities (Hall, 2018;McKenzie, 2023;Ovetz, 2020). While research on digital education focuses primarily on the cognitive processes of technology-enhanced learning, this literature focuses on workers' experiences.…”