Making platforms work: relationship labor and the management of publics
- PDF / 581,936 Bytes
- 34 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 94 Downloads / 220 Views
Making platforms work: relationship labor and the management of publics Benjamin Shestakofsky 1 & Shreeharsh Kelkar 2 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
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.
The authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order. Both authors contributed equally to the manuscript.
* Shreeharsh Kelkar [email protected] Benjamin Shestakofsky [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Theory and Society
Keywords Algorithmic systems . Algorithmic management . Digital technologies .
Organizational ethnography . Platform governance . Relationship labor Digital platforms bring into existence – and exert control over – communities of users. At the same time, however, platforms are dependent upon and accountable to the publics that they serve. Given the tensions that arise as platform companies attempt to balance their own interests with the competing interests of users, the question of “platform governance” – how platforms control users’ activities and structure the terms of participation – has figured prominently in co
Data Loading...
