Gig Economy

Brian Dolber is Assistant Professor of Communication at California State University San Marcos. He is the author of Media and Culture in the U.S. Jewish Labor Movement: Sweating for Democracy in the Interwar Era (2017). He is also the author of several journal articles published in venues such as Communication, Culture and Critique, Communication Theory, and Democratic Communiqué, and book chapters. His ongoing research focuses on the gig economy, particularly the organizing methods and media strategies of Rideshare Drivers United in Los Angeles.Michelle Rodino-Colocino is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Her research, teaching, activism, and creative work span feminist media and critical cultural studies, with special interest in labor, new media, and social movements. Her scholarly articles have been published in journals such as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; Communication, Culture, and Critique; Critical Studies in Media Communications; Feminist Media Studies; New Media & Society; and Women’s Studies in Communication, among others.Chenjerai Kumanyika is a researcher, journalist, and artist who works as an Assistant Professor in Rutgers University’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies. His research and teaching focus on the intersections of social justice and emerging media in the cultural and creative industries. He has written about these issues in journals such as Popular Music & Society; Popular Communication; and Technology, Pedagogy and Education, and The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture.Todd Wolfson is associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the convergence of technology, inequality and social change. Todd is author of Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left (2014) and co-editor of The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements (2017) as well as over a dozen peer-reviewed articles. He is currently working on a book focused on new forms of worker organizing in the gig economy. Todd is co-director of the Media, Inequality & Chance Center (MIC), a partnership between University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University.

"As a former tech union organizer, this book is critically important to understanding the intersection between technology and the future of work around the globe. […] The authors bring the voice of the workers out of the shadows to let them tell their story of long hours, low pay, and a precarious working life. Marcus Courtney, Former President of WashTech/CWA Local 37083, and Principal of Courtney Public Affairs"Building on its critical political economic lens, this necessary volume maps the pernicious tentacles of gig work as they seek to expand into all facets of daily life. […] The authors give ample room to revisiting the intrinsic hope of labor’s lessons past and present: the potential for workers, advocates, academics and others to organize together to demand justice commensurate with the value they bring company executives and shareholders, to the end of a more equitable future for all." Sarah T. Roberts, Associate Professor and Co-Founder, Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), UCLA"This book is an invaluable map of the new networked terrain of exploitation, and a chronicle of the class war being waged across it. The ideas, stories, and strategies explored in these pages are drawn from the struggle against platform capital, and will be of great value to those who want to understand this struggle, and to those who want to continue it." Ben Tarnoff, Co-Founder of Logic Magazine and Co-Editor of Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—And How They Do It"A brilliant book that brings together a truly global set of insights into the gig economy." - Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young, Transfer

• Introduction: The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence Part 2: 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?: Ridehailing 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 Part 3: 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: Notes on (Dis)Organized Academia Part 4: Media: Negotiating the Gig Economy 9. “Viene cuando viene, no es gran cantidad de dinero”: 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 Part 5: Struggles: Organizing in the Gig Economy 12. Platform Organizing: Tech Worker Struggles and Digital Tools for Labor Movements 13. Competition, Collaboration and Combination: Differences in Attitudes to Collective Organization Among Offline and Online Platform Workers 14. Uprooting Uber: From “Data Fracking” to Data Commons 15. Precarity Beyond the Gig: From University Halls to Tech Campuses 16. The Cycle of Struggle: Food Platform Strikes in the UK 2016-18 Part 6: Conclusion: We Are All Gig Workers