Communication Inequality and the Technopolitical Structure of Platform Work: Aotearoa New Zealand Platform Workers During COVID-19

Authors

  • Leon A. Salter Massey University
  • Mohan J. Dutta Massey University

Keywords:

platform work, gig economy, precarity, Uber, communication inequality, voice, COVID-19, Culture-Centered Approach (CCA)

Abstract

Drawing on the culture-centered approach (CCA), we conducted 25 in-depth interviews with Aotearoa New Zealand rideshare and delivery drivers, demonstrating how the technopolitical structure of platform work intensified communication inequality, and resultingly, precarity, during the COVID-19 crisis. Although literature has recognized that the platform has become the place of employment, less researched is how this makes it the place of information distribution, handing power to the platform operators, while contributing to the precarity of platform workers. The concept of communication inequality has been underapplied to considering the intersections between the structure of platform work and worker precarity. A thematic analysis concentrates on 4 key themes linked to the centralization of information flows through the platform architecture: information restriction, indirect management, unilateral term-setting, and accentuated precarity. We conclude by arguing for more research on platform work from a communication perspective that foregrounds the voices of workers.

Author Biographies

Leon A. Salter, Massey University

Leon Salter is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Culture-Centered Research and Evaluation (CARE), Massey University, New Zealand. His research focuses on the impact of gig work and precarity on worker health and wellbeing, the union movement and collective organizing. Recently awarded the prestigious MBIE Science Whitinga Research Fellowship, he uses qualitative methods and critical theory to interrogate the underlying logics and frameworks which underpin digital phenomena, as well as how they impact the lives of the most vulnerable.

Mohan J. Dutta, Massey University

Mohan Dutta is Dean's Chair Professor of Communication at Massey University.  He is the Director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), developing culturally-centered, community-based projects of social change, advocacy, and activism that articulate health as a human right. Mohan Dutta's research examines the role of advocacy and activism in challenging marginalizing structures, the relationship between poverty and health, political economy of global health policies, the mobilization of cultural tropes for the justification of neo-colonial health development projects, and the ways in which participatory culture-centered processes and strategies of radical democracy serve as axes of global social change.

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Published

2024-01-29

Issue

Vol. 18 (2024)

Section

Articles

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