Paper Short Abstract:

The paper explores the algorithmic imaginaries employed by two different groups of platform workers (content creators and delivery workers) and explores the strategies for negotiating with the algorithm in their everyday working lives.

Paper Abstract:

Platforms are ubiquitous – we work on and through platforms, communicate via platforms, we also shop, order food or find therapists via various platforms. The term ”platform economy“ thus serves as an umbrella term for various types of labour facilitated via these platforms (Berg, 2018). Increasingly these platforms are algorithmically ordered, which puts the workers in a position where they have to negotiate their working conditions directly with or via the algorithms, leading to phenomena such as algorithmic precarity (Chan, 2022) or algorithmic insecurity (Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2021).

The proposed paper is based on 18 months long ethnographic fieldwork including participant observation and semi-structured interviews with two different types of platform workers – content creators on social media and drivers and delivery workers. While both these groups are in their everyday working lives dependent on algorithms, they are rarely compared or studied together. In my research, however, I have found that the experiences of content creators and drivers and delivery people with algorithmically mediated work often overlap. Specifically, I have found three distinctive ways to negotiate with the algorithm: 1) learning about the algorithm via interacting with it, which includes different tests and strategies to find out what the algorithm will do in different situations, 2) trying self-optimize discipline oneself in order to be understood by the algorithm and 3) engaging in cross-platform labour in order to “stay ahead“ of the algorithm. Theoretically, the paper draws on the concept of algorithmic imaginaries (Bucher, 2016).