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Critical research into the gig economy frequently relies on using platform interfaces, platform mobile applications or websites, as intermediaries to contact and recruit participants. Yet, these methods are accompanied by significant ethical implications that are rarely considered. In this article, we look at the organisational features of platform interfaces for research and explore the ways in which, through their intensive knowledge about their users, they present additional challenges to researchers' abilities to (a) conduct independent research – for example by influencing the participant recruitment process and (b) establish and maintain respondent anonymity and researcher transparency. Our analysis is based on an international study of platform workers which investigates working conditions and fairness in the gig economy in both geographically tethered gig work and cloudwork. We argue that the ethical boundaries of doing research through platform interfaces are shaped not only by researchers, but also by the platforms whose interfaces researchers use. Establishing and protecting the anonymity of research participants provides an acute example of this, as platforms have the potential to scrutinise the activities of researchers on their interfaces, and capture information shared between researchers and participants. The question of anonymity arises also in the reverse order: when platforms share personal information on workers, at a level not required by researchers. After building our argument, we propose a set of suggestions for promoting ethical research in the study of gig economy platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth of gig work – short-term tasks organized and mediated by digital labor platforms such as Uber and Upwork – is the focus for an increasing body of research. Yet there has been a lack of systematic frameworks that could evaluate this type of labor against decent work standards, and inform consumers and others about relative adherence to those standards across platforms and sectors. In this article we report the development of the "Fairwork framework", based on five decent work principles of fair pay, conditions, contracts, management, and representation. The framework and its associated methodology were first field-tested in South Africa and we report on its use to rate seven gig economy platforms. A league table of platforms was widely publicized and one platform was persuaded to improve working conditions. We reflect on the use and content of the framework, and its role in future action research on decent gig work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the digital economy, innovation processes increasingly rely on highly specialised know-how and open-source software shared on digital platforms on collaborative programming. The information that feeds into the content on these platforms is provided voluntarily by a vast crowd of knowledgeable users from all over the world. In contributing to the platforms, users invest their time and share knowledge with strangers to add to the rising body of digital knowledge. This requires an open mindset and trust. In this study, we argue that such a mindset is not just an individual asset but determined by the local communities the users are embedded in. We, therefore, hypothesise that places with higher levels of trust should contribute more to Stack Overflow, the world's largest question-and-answer platform for programming questions. In relating the city-level contributions of 266 OECD metropolitan areas to infrastructure, economic, and trust measures, we find support for this hypothesis. In contrast, click rates to the platform are solely driven by infrastructure and economic variables, but not by trust. These findings highlight the importance of societal values in the twenty-first-century knowledge economy: if policymakers want to develop a lively local digital economy, it is not enough to provide fast Internet access and business opportunities. Instead, it is equally important to establish a trust-building environment that fosters sharing of innovative ideas, collaborations, and knowledge spillovers. Code and Data: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital labour platforms do not attempt to build trust between worker, client, and platform on the basis of strong and durable ties. Instead, platforms utilize a double articulation of algorithmic power to govern spatially dispersed workforces in both material and discursive ways. However, algorithms do not have hegemonic outcomes, and they do not entirely strip away agency from platform workers. Through manipulation, subversion, and disruption, workers bring fissures in algorithmic power into being. Fissures in algorithmic power are moments in which algorithms do not govern as intended. While these moments do not simply result in positive outcomes for workers, they show that algorithmic power is inherently only ever partial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital labour platforms do not attempt to build trust between worker, client, and platform on the basis of strong and durable ties. Instead, platforms utilise a double articulation of algorithmic power to govern spatially dispersed workforces in both material and discursive ways. However, algorithms do not have hegemonic outcomes, and they do not entirely strip away agency from platform workers. Through manipulation, subversion, and disruption, workers bring fissures in algorithmic power into being. Fissures in algorithmic power are moments in which algorithms do not govern as intended. While these moments do not simply result in positive outcomes for workers, they show that algorithmic power is inherently only ever partial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world of work is changing. Communications technologies and digital platforms have enabled some types of work to be delivered from anywhere in the world by anyone with a computer and an internet connection. This digitally-mediated work brings jobs to parts of the world traditionally characterized by low incomes and high unemployment rates. As such, it has been touted by governments, third-sector organizations, and the private sector as a novel strategy of economic development. Drawing on a four-year study with 65 workers in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda, we examine the development implications of the gig economy on labour in Africa. We offer four analytical development dimensions through which platform-based remote work impacts the lives and livelihoods of African workers, i.e. freedom, flexibility, precarity and vulnerablity. We argue that these dimensions should be understood in a continuum to better explain the working conditions and lives of workers in the gig economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the (dis)embeddedness of digital labour within the remote gig economy. We use interview and survey data to highlight how platform workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are normatively disembedded from social protections through a process of commodification. Normative disembeddedness leaves workers exposed to the vagaries of the external labour market due to an absence of labour regulations and rights. It also endangers social reproduction by limiting access to healthcare and requiring workers to engage in significant unpaid 'work-for-labour'. However, we show that these workers are also simultaneously embedded within interpersonal networks of trust, which enable the work to be completed despite the low-trust nature of the gig economy. In bringing together the concepts of normative and network embeddedness, we reconnect the two sides of Polanyi's thinking and demonstrate the value of an integrated understanding of Polanyi's approach to embeddedness for understanding contemporary economic transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information‐technologies are essential for global capitalism to function at speed across scale, space and complexity. The importance of software and algorithms in the governance of these systems is reflected in the attention of scholars to the ways digital code and materiality (re)combine to create hybrid digital/material spaces of economic activity, movement and everyday life. This paper extends this work in two key ways: first by emphasising the relational aspect of these code/spaces, and second by showing how the digital algorithms of code/spaces are hackable rather than hegemonic. Using the case study of frequent flyer programmes we demonstrate how networked knowledge‐sharing reshapes code/spaces to provide unintended opportunities such as low‐cost travel and access to spaces normally only frequented by global elites. Although this case highlights vulnerabilities in the code of global capitalism, it is primarily only those with significant lifestyle privilege who are able to fully participate in these subversions. Moreover, while much of the value captured by “airline hackers” comes from airlines’ profit margins, the relationality of code/spaces can impact citizens and consumers not directly connected to or interested in airline travel. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that in contrast to characterisations of omnipresence and hegemony, the information networks and algorithms of global capitalism contain moments of uneven porousness and selective hackability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining data from a sample survey, the 2013 Oxford Internet Survey, with the 2011 UK Census, we employ small area estimation to estimate Internet use in small geographies in Britain. This is the first attempt to estimate Internet use at any small-scale level. Doing so allows us to understand the local geographies of British Internet use, showing that the area with least use is in the North East, followed by central Wales. The highest Internet use is in London and southeastern England. The most interesting finding is that after controlling for demographic variables, geographic differences become nonsignificant. The apparent geographic differences appear to be due to differences in demographic characteristics. We conclude by considering the policy implications of this fact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global production networks (GPNs) have become a key framework in conceptualizing linkages, power and structure in globalized production. However, this framework has been less successful in integrating the influence of digital information and ICTs in production, and this problematic in a world where relationships and power are increasingly mediated by digital information flows and resources. We thus look to adapt the GPN framework to allow more substantive analysis of 'the digital'. Primarily, this is done through a theoretical analysis of the three core categories of the GPN framework - embeddedness, value and networks - to highlight how these categories can better integrate a more dynamic and contested conceptualization of the digital. Illustrations from research on the digitalization of tea sector GPNs in East Africa highlight how these theoretical advances provide new insights on the digital and its expanding role in economic production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the digital dimensions of places as represented by online, geocoded references to the economic, social, and political experiences of the city. These digital layers are invisible to the naked eye, but form a central component of the augmentations and mediations of place enabled by hundreds of millions of mobile computing devices and other digital technologies. The analysis highlights how these augmentations of place differ across space and language and highlights both the differences and some of the causal factors behind them. This is performed through a global study of all online content indexed within Google Maps, and more specific analyses of the linguistically and topically segregated layers of information over four selected places. The uneven linguistic geographies that this study reveals undoubtedly influence the many ways in which place is enacted and brought into being. The larger aim of this project is to use these initial mappings of the linguistic contours of the geoweb to push forward a broader debate about how augmented inclusions and exclusions, visibilities and invisibilities will shape the way that places become defined, imagined, and experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are witnessing the emergence of a 'planetary labour market' for digital work. Building on a five-year study of digital work in some of the world's economic margins, we show a planetary labour market does not do away with geography, it rather exists to take advantage of it. Digital technologies have been deployed in order to bring into being a labour market that can operate at a planetary scale, and has particular affordances and limitations that rarely bolster both the structural and associational power of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]