Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Technologies of Communication and Evaluation: How Algorithms Affect Takeaway Platform Laboring in China

Sun, May 27, 12:30 to 13:45, Hilton Prague, Floor: LL, Congress Hall II - Exhibit Hall/Posters

Abstract

The global emergence of the on-demand economy has attracted a growing number of researchers to exam how digital applications build, connect, and reconstruct the relations among consumers, laborers, and digital platforms. This article examines the work practices of food delivering labor through a case study of a large online food-ordering platform in China -- Baidu Deliveries. By using a three-cornered approach which includes interviews, participant observations, and online ethnography, it scrutinizes how algorithms manage, control and evaluate the performance of delivery laboring. Through developing the “algorithmic labor” framework, the paper argues that it is time to take algorithmic mechanisms into the stage of digital production and rethink their socio-political meanings in the information society.

Author