[Air-L] CfP Convergence Special Issue: Social Media and Platform Work: Stories, Practices, and Workers’ Organisation

[Rafael Grohmann]

   Hi AoIRs
   We are editing a special issue for Convergence journal that might
   interest you.



   CfP Convergence Special Issue: Social Media and Platform Work: Stories,
   Practices, and Workers’ Organisation
   Guest Editors: Júlia Vilasís-Pamos, Fernanda Pires, Willian Fernandes
   Araújo, and Rafael Grohmann
   This special issue aims to deepen the understanding of the ways
   platform workers engage with social media. During the last decade,
   social media have been instrumental within platform work because they
   are fundamental to this type of labour. Platform workers’ use of social
   media can be considered forms of communication, socialisation and
   organisation. Through WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok
   and other channels, workers can share tips, stories, and practices.
   Therefore, it is crucial to develop new understandings of the different
   uses, discourses, practices and stories that emerge when platform work
   intersects with social media.



   Furthermore, platform workers can use social media to bring to the fore
   different forms of exploitation, discrimination, and inequalities
   around platform power, and also in relation to consumers of the
   platform services. Thus, it has clearly become necessary to interrogate
   the ways in which platform work is reinforcing pre-existing
   inequalities in the areas of gender, class, sexuality, and country of
   origin, among others, as well as to understand the role that social
   media play to mitigate or increase these inequalities.
   Beyond questioning inequalities associated with platform work expressed
   in social media, it is also important to explore the ways social media
   platforms can be key spaces for workers to collaborate, socialize, and
   learn informally about this type of labour. Workers share stories on
   social media about their work routine and everyday practices. Social
   media can also be a place for work self-promotion and the emergence of
   workers acting as influencers and coaches. Hence, it is important to
   raise questions about the centrality that social media has for workers’
   organizations, strikes, fissures among the collective, or other forms
   of emerging solidarities.
   We invite researchers to send proposals focused on different
   theoretical and empirical frameworks on the use of social media among
   platform workers. We strongly encourage contributions from scholars of
   the Global South, and from different academic fields. This may include
   (but is not limited to) the following topics:

   ●  Platform work and social media influencers;
   ●  Social media uses for platform work;
   ●  Discourses about platform work within social media communities and
   groups;
   ●  Digital workers’ solidarity and organisation through social media;
   ●  Social media and platform worker’s informal learning;
   ●  The use of humorous content to discuss platform work on social
   media;
   ●  The use of social media for discussing the precariousness of
   platform work;
   ●  The use of social media for denouncing inequalities in platform work
   (gender, immigration; social class and other intersecting aspects);
   ●  Platform workers’ reputation on social media;
   ●  Worker’s self-representation in social media platforms;
   ●  Social media and the borders and limits of the workspace in a
   platformisation context;

   Timeline and information for authors
   Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 15th March 2022
   Deadline for Full Papers: 31th August 2022
   Expected date of publication: April 2023
   Potential contributors should submit a 500-word abstract (excluding
   references), a 100-word bio, and the contact information of the
   corresponding author to the guest editors: Júlia Vilasís Pamos
   ([1]julia.vilasis at upf.edu); Fernanda Pires
   ([2]fernanda.pires at uab.cat); Willian Fernandes Araújo
   ([3]waraujo at unisc.br); Rafael Grohmann ([4]rafaelgrohmann at unisinos.br).
   Feel free to consult the special issue editors about your article ideas
   and potential angles or approaches.  After the abstracts have been
   selected, authors will be invited to submit a full paper. Please note
   that acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee publication, given
   that all papers will go through the journal’s peer review process.
   The call for papers will soon be available on the journal's
   website:  [5]https://journals.sagepub.com/page/con/collections/call-for
   -papers-index
   best,
   Rafael

References

   1. mailto:julia.vilasis at upf.edu
   2. mailto:fernanda.pires at uab.cat
   3. mailto:waraujo at unisc.br
   4. mailto:rafaelgrohmann at unisinos.br
   5. https://journals.sagepub.com/page/con/collections/call-for-papers-index