The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence

Description

This edited collection examines the gig economy in the age of convergence from a critical political economic perspective. Contributions explore how media, technology, and labor are converging to create new modes of production, as well as new modes of resistance. From rideshare drivers in Los Angeles to domestic workers in Delhi, from sex work to podcasting, this book draws together research that examines the gig economy's exploitation of workers and their resistance. Employing critical theoretical perspectives and methodologies in a variety of national contexts, contributors consider the roles that media, policy, culture, and history, as well as gender, race, and ethnicity play in forging working conditions in the 'gig economy'. Contributors examine the complex and historical relationships between media and gig work　integral to capitalism with the aim of exposing and, ultimately, ending exploitation. This book will appeal to students and scholars examining questions of technology, media, and labor across media and communication studies, information studies, and labor studies as well as activists, journalists, and policymakers. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents About the Editors About the Authors Acknowledgments I Introduction: The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence II History: We Were Always Gig Workers 1 Behind the Wheel and in the Streets: Technological Transformation, Exit, and Voice in the New York City Taxi Industry 2 More than a Gig? Ride-hailing in Los Angeles County 3 Care in the Platform Economy: Interrogating the Digital Organisation of Domestic Work in India 4 Sex Work/Gig Work: A Feminist Analysis of Precarious Domina Labor in the Gig Economy III Ideology: Thinking Like a Gig Economist 5 “The Future Demands We All Become Prolific Artists”: Cultural Ideals of Gig Work in Popular Management Literature 6 “Uber for Radio?”: Professionalism and Production Cultures in Podcasting 7 Good People “Belong Anywhere”: Airbnb’s Emerging Neofascism 8 ‘Uber’ University and Labor Recomposition: Struggling Notes on (Dis)organized Academia IV Media: Negotiating the Gig Economy 9 “¿Qué hay detrás de todo?”: Opacity, Precarity, and the Unwaged Labor of Latina Audiobook Narrators 10 Liquid Assets: Camming and Cashing In on Desire in the Digital Age 11 This is Gig Leisure: Games, Gamification, and Gig Labor 12 Uprooting Uber: From “Data Fracking” to Data Commons V Struggles: Organizing in the Gig Economy 13 Platform Organizing: Tech Worker Struggles and Digital Tools for Labour Movements 14 Competition, Collaboration and Combination: Differences in Attitudes to Collective Organization Among Offline and Online Platform Workers 15 Precarity Beyond the Gig: From University Halls to Tech Campuses 16 The Cycle of Struggle: Food Platform Strikes in the UK 2016–18 VI Conclusion: We Are All Gig Workers Conclusion: We Are All Gig Workers Bibliography Index