Adrian Athique and Lin Zhang, both leaders in their fields, will join us via Zoom to discuss their latest research on platform capitalism(s) from non-Western perspectives, expanding our existing frameworks for platform analysis!
Join The Platform Lab for a discussion with the authors of the incredible book Platforms and Cultural Production: Brooke Erin Duffy, David B. Nieborg, and Thomas Poell! Register here.
The Platform Lab's first event of 2023: Adrian Athique & Lin Zhang will discuss platform capitalisms!
Our guests Adrian Athique and Lin Zhang, both leaders in their fields, will join us via Zoom to discuss their latest research on platform capitalism(s) from non-Western perspectives, expanding our existing frameworks for platform analysis.
Register here.
Platform Problems is meant as a connection between the Platform Lab and the DiGS Lab (Digital Intimacy, Gender, and Sexuality Lab). The participants were invited to help brainstorm around “platform problems” suggested by our presenters.
Marc Steinberg (Platform Lab director) and Stefanie Duguay (DiGS Lab director) have been brainstorming ideas for fostering connection across departments and labs while (and because) working remotely. This informal workshop, named “Platform Problems” happened with the participation of PhD students, who have overlaps in their research pertaining to technology, infrastructures, platforms, AI, etc. Each participant talked about their research for a short amount of time and presented a ‘problem’ of sorts – which could be something the students came up against in their research or a broader theoretical or analytical problem. Following this, a collective discussion happened to think through these problems.
This symposium features the work of two scholars whose research offers close studies of just-in-time platforms, management, and labour: Dr. Rutvica Andrijasevic and Dr. Julie Yujie Chen.
The authors approach key instances of the industrial and service economies – labour mediators in electronics manufacturing in Central and Eastern Europe, and app-based food delivery platforms in China – to push media studies, platform studies, and management studies in new directions. In doing so, they offer insight on the future of just-in-time labour and just-in-time media that inevitably require attention to developments across various geographies. Highlighting the roles of Temporary Worker Agencies and government policies in the manufacture and operation of platforms, Dr. Andrijasevic and Dr. Chen focus our attention on labour’s mediations of and by platforms. Focusing on the making of the electronic devices that keep us working and the food delivery apps that keeps us fed, this symposium also sheds light on the platform-mediated, just-in-time logistics that have only become more essential and more visible under COVID-19.
Rutvica Andrijasevic, based at the University of Bristol (UK), is an activist scholar with research interests in international labour migration and business. Her texts on transnational production, labour migration and human trafficking have appeared in a variety of top international journals and edited volumes and have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Greek, Croatian and Mandarin.
Julie Yujie Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) and holds a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is the lead author of Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (Emerald, 2018).
