Pub Date : 2024-01-10DOI: 10.1177/14614448231222944
Mengyang Zhao
This study delves into the gendered labor regime of platform game work in China, a burgeoning remote platform economy connecting customers with workers for entertainment or gameplay assistance. It reveals that offline gender divisions persistently seep into and solidify the logic of gender discipline in online gaming, channeling women into service-centric roles that face devaluation. Beyond the overt obstacles hindering women from lucrative gaming tasks, their marginalized position is intertwined with diminished gaming capital in team-based competitive gameplay, a factor frequently misinterpreted as “gaming skill.” Even ostensibly neutral policy moves have pronounced gendered implications, as gaming platforms, wary of governmental repercussions, strategically diminish the prominence of feminine-presenting workers. By elucidating the multifaceted ways women are culturally, socially, and algorithmically marginalized within the gaming service supply chain, this study enriches the growing body of literature on the intersectionality within the platform workforce.
{"title":"“Ready worker two”: Gendered labor regime of platform-based game work in China","authors":"Mengyang Zhao","doi":"10.1177/14614448231222944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231222944","url":null,"abstract":"This study delves into the gendered labor regime of platform game work in China, a burgeoning remote platform economy connecting customers with workers for entertainment or gameplay assistance. It reveals that offline gender divisions persistently seep into and solidify the logic of gender discipline in online gaming, channeling women into service-centric roles that face devaluation. Beyond the overt obstacles hindering women from lucrative gaming tasks, their marginalized position is intertwined with diminished gaming capital in team-based competitive gameplay, a factor frequently misinterpreted as “gaming skill.” Even ostensibly neutral policy moves have pronounced gendered implications, as gaming platforms, wary of governmental repercussions, strategically diminish the prominence of feminine-presenting workers. By elucidating the multifaceted ways women are culturally, socially, and algorithmically marginalized within the gaming service supply chain, this study enriches the growing body of literature on the intersectionality within the platform workforce.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"68 21","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139440888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-10DOI: 10.1177/14614448231223419
Fernando N. van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, Michael Dieter, Esther Weltevrede
‘Super apps’ are on the rise. This study explores the characteristics, origins, and manifestations of these apps worldwide, presenting the concept of ‘super-appification’ to describe processes of conglomeration in the global digital economy. Super apps aim to become deeply integrated into people’s everyday lives, capturing and monetising essential activities. By analysing 41 super apps, we identify four distinct types of ‘super-app constellations’, showcasing different patterns and dynamics of conglomeration: ‘Swiss-Army Knife’ apps that consolidate services in one app, ‘Family’ apps that expand through subsidiaries, and ‘Host’ and ‘Hub’-style apps that leverage external developers. This typology offers a comprehensive understanding of the conglomeration patterns underpinning the rise of super apps, involving corporate, development and international expansion strategies. Ultimately, super-appification represents an intensified form of ‘appification’, as these apps increasingly pervade and commodify various aspects of everyday life, such as payment, insurance, grocery delivery, mobility and travel, with significant sociopolitical implications.
{"title":"Super-appification: Conglomeration in the global digital economy","authors":"Fernando N. van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, Michael Dieter, Esther Weltevrede","doi":"10.1177/14614448231223419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231223419","url":null,"abstract":"‘Super apps’ are on the rise. This study explores the characteristics, origins, and manifestations of these apps worldwide, presenting the concept of ‘super-appification’ to describe processes of conglomeration in the global digital economy. Super apps aim to become deeply integrated into people’s everyday lives, capturing and monetising essential activities. By analysing 41 super apps, we identify four distinct types of ‘super-app constellations’, showcasing different patterns and dynamics of conglomeration: ‘Swiss-Army Knife’ apps that consolidate services in one app, ‘Family’ apps that expand through subsidiaries, and ‘Host’ and ‘Hub’-style apps that leverage external developers. This typology offers a comprehensive understanding of the conglomeration patterns underpinning the rise of super apps, involving corporate, development and international expansion strategies. Ultimately, super-appification represents an intensified form of ‘appification’, as these apps increasingly pervade and commodify various aspects of everyday life, such as payment, insurance, grocery delivery, mobility and travel, with significant sociopolitical implications.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"93 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139440163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-10DOI: 10.1177/14614448231221238
Angela Ke Li
The current literature on algorithmic management primarily explores its external ramifications for workers. Drawing upon the case of Meituan Waimai, China’s dominant food-delivery platform, this article delves into the internal logic that guides the design of algorithmic management. I highlight how an optimal mindset and a mechanized view of human labor drive the formulation of algorithmic management, leading to what I call “algorithmic unfitness.” This concept represents a dissonance between algorithmically programmed, reductionist visions of food delivery and real-world experiences on the ground. In response, the platform constantly delegates tasks from machines to laborers who engage in repair work. The design logic positions couriers as adaptable robots, whose compliance and flexibility are simultaneously requested by the platform. By shedding light on the design choices behind algorithmic management, the article also offers methodological insights for scholars researching algorithmic power in general.
{"title":"Working with algorithmic management: Design logic, algorithmic unfitness, and labor repair behind the wall","authors":"Angela Ke Li","doi":"10.1177/14614448231221238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231221238","url":null,"abstract":"The current literature on algorithmic management primarily explores its external ramifications for workers. Drawing upon the case of Meituan Waimai, China’s dominant food-delivery platform, this article delves into the internal logic that guides the design of algorithmic management. I highlight how an optimal mindset and a mechanized view of human labor drive the formulation of algorithmic management, leading to what I call “algorithmic unfitness.” This concept represents a dissonance between algorithmically programmed, reductionist visions of food delivery and real-world experiences on the ground. In response, the platform constantly delegates tasks from machines to laborers who engage in repair work. The design logic positions couriers as adaptable robots, whose compliance and flexibility are simultaneously requested by the platform. By shedding light on the design choices behind algorithmic management, the article also offers methodological insights for scholars researching algorithmic power in general.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"4 21","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139439838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-10DOI: 10.1177/14614448231220346
Xun “Sunny” Liu, Qi Shen, Jeffrey Hancock
Social robots can benefit aging people, especially those with restricted social interactions and health care, but how do resource-poor older adults respond to them? In this study, 5 focus groups with 60 older participants in rural China revealed their perceptions of social robots, concerns about the technology, and the types of social robots they were likely to accept. The participants cited multiple technological, discomfort, privacy, safety, and financial fraud concerns. They struggled to define robots as machines, humans, or something else but preferred small-sized, animal-shaped, or young female-gendered human-like robots. Their interconnected perceptions, concerns, and preferences illuminate a resource-poor group’s struggles, imaginations, hopes, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities when a new social and technological actor is embedded in their social worlds, reflecting how people understand social robots in relation to themselves and themselves in relation to social robots. Our study findings contribute to understanding social robots’ subjectivities and ways to design culturally and socially acceptable robots.
{"title":"But is it for us? Rural Chinese elders’ perceptions, concerns, and physical preferences regarding social robots","authors":"Xun “Sunny” Liu, Qi Shen, Jeffrey Hancock","doi":"10.1177/14614448231220346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231220346","url":null,"abstract":"Social robots can benefit aging people, especially those with restricted social interactions and health care, but how do resource-poor older adults respond to them? In this study, 5 focus groups with 60 older participants in rural China revealed their perceptions of social robots, concerns about the technology, and the types of social robots they were likely to accept. The participants cited multiple technological, discomfort, privacy, safety, and financial fraud concerns. They struggled to define robots as machines, humans, or something else but preferred small-sized, animal-shaped, or young female-gendered human-like robots. Their interconnected perceptions, concerns, and preferences illuminate a resource-poor group’s struggles, imaginations, hopes, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities when a new social and technological actor is embedded in their social worlds, reflecting how people understand social robots in relation to themselves and themselves in relation to social robots. Our study findings contribute to understanding social robots’ subjectivities and ways to design culturally and socially acceptable robots.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"9 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139440005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-09DOI: 10.1177/14614448231223489
Mel Monier
{"title":"Book Review: Racialized Media: The Design, Delivery, and Decoding of Race and Ethnicity","authors":"Mel Monier","doi":"10.1177/14614448231223489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231223489","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"7 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139443556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-02DOI: 10.1177/14614448231220383
Alexander Smit, Joëlle Swart, M. Broersma
This article asks what digital literacy tactics low-literate Dutch adults employ to bypass their low-literacy to be able to participate in digital society, and what the consequences are for their socio-digital exclusion and inclusion. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of digitalization for low-literate citizens, and the linguistic and digital barriers encountered in everyday life. Drawing upon participant observations and semi-structured interviews with low-literate adult citizens in four libraries, a community center, and a school for adult education ( N = 73), this article develops a taxonomy of five tactics which enables low-literate citizens to digitally participate despite their linguistic and digital barriers: (1) informal support structures, (2) formal support structures, (3) non-written communication, (4) translation software, and (5) optimal character recognition. We show how these tactics of appropriating the affordances of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and making use of social networks enable low-literate Dutch citizens to participate in socially situated manners, making use of social support structures and digital literacies developed in relation to “foreign” languages. Consequently, this study counters the stigma on such marginalized groups, who are often assumed to be unable or unwilling to participate, and presents them as not adhering to the dominant discourse of participatory culture. Hence, the added value of this study is threefold: (1) it centers the capabilities of low-literate citizens stemming from social capital and obfuscated linguistic potential, (2) it gives visibility toward more hidden everyday (digital) practices of marginalized subgroups with a larger distance toward the digital society, and (3) it foregrounds the lived experiences of the user and their (limited) use of ICTs, and how tactics are developed and practiced to bypass linguistic and/or digital barriers showing situated agency and problem-solving capacities. We argue that digital literacies should not be considered as a prerequisite for digital participation and inclusion, as our findings show that low-literate Dutch citizens are a highly diverse group that are capable of participating, despite their low (digital)-literacy. However, they do so in socially situated and non-written manners, in line with their digital and linguistic capabilities and barriers.
{"title":"Bypassing digital literacy: Marginalized citizens’ tactics for participation and inclusion in digital societies","authors":"Alexander Smit, Joëlle Swart, M. Broersma","doi":"10.1177/14614448231220383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231220383","url":null,"abstract":"This article asks what digital literacy tactics low-literate Dutch adults employ to bypass their low-literacy to be able to participate in digital society, and what the consequences are for their socio-digital exclusion and inclusion. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of digitalization for low-literate citizens, and the linguistic and digital barriers encountered in everyday life. Drawing upon participant observations and semi-structured interviews with low-literate adult citizens in four libraries, a community center, and a school for adult education ( N = 73), this article develops a taxonomy of five tactics which enables low-literate citizens to digitally participate despite their linguistic and digital barriers: (1) informal support structures, (2) formal support structures, (3) non-written communication, (4) translation software, and (5) optimal character recognition. We show how these tactics of appropriating the affordances of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and making use of social networks enable low-literate Dutch citizens to participate in socially situated manners, making use of social support structures and digital literacies developed in relation to “foreign” languages. Consequently, this study counters the stigma on such marginalized groups, who are often assumed to be unable or unwilling to participate, and presents them as not adhering to the dominant discourse of participatory culture. Hence, the added value of this study is threefold: (1) it centers the capabilities of low-literate citizens stemming from social capital and obfuscated linguistic potential, (2) it gives visibility toward more hidden everyday (digital) practices of marginalized subgroups with a larger distance toward the digital society, and (3) it foregrounds the lived experiences of the user and their (limited) use of ICTs, and how tactics are developed and practiced to bypass linguistic and/or digital barriers showing situated agency and problem-solving capacities. We argue that digital literacies should not be considered as a prerequisite for digital participation and inclusion, as our findings show that low-literate Dutch citizens are a highly diverse group that are capable of participating, despite their low (digital)-literacy. However, they do so in socially situated and non-written manners, in line with their digital and linguistic capabilities and barriers.","PeriodicalId":508039,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"43 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139452542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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