Solidarity and collective issues in remote crowd work: a mixed methods study of the Amazon Mechanical Turk online forum
Hertwig, Markus ; Holz, Manuel ; Lorig, Philipp
New Technology, Work and Employment
2024
39
2
281–302
crowd work ; digital economy ; social mobilization ; labour relations
Labour relations
https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12285
English
Bibliogr.
"The article deals with collective issues and emerging forms of solidarity in remote crowd work. Using the example of the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform, we analyse communication in one of the oldest online labour forums (OLF) with a mixed-methods-approach (web scraping, topic modelling and qualitative content analysis) over a 10-year period. We identify six broader themes of collective relevance whose importance varies over time. The results indicate that elements of solidarity emerge as crowd workers communicate about deprivations, develop collective orientations, and invoke injustice frames. However, there are no indications of more profound collective activities, which may be due to different types of crowd workers, some of whom have conflicting orientations. We develop assumptions about restrictions of OLF in facilitating collective action and tasks for orga"nisers. The research contributes to a better understanding of mobilisation issues in remote platform labour."
Digital
The ETUI is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ETUI.