April 8
8am-10am (EDT/Boston Time)
While previous sessions have focused on conceptual and horizontal issues, this session kicks-off a series of vertical explorations into different application areas of digital self- determination by examining what it means to be able to participate in the digital economy. The session highlights insights from youth and media research on creative expression and different forms of “capital”, and also addresses the relationship between digital citizenship skills and economic opportunity.
Background
As our lives, - and young people's lives in particular - are increasingly shaped by digital technologies, so are economic activities and businesses increasingly based on digital goods and services. Through networks, collaboration, social media and numerous creative outlets, people are engaging and reaping the benefits of the digital economy. This session aims to explore and reflect on the digitals skills and motivations required to take part in the digital economy as well as the new manners in which value is created as people interact in the digital world and “the boundaries between the commercial and personal spheres, between work and play, are often blurring” (BKC).
Moreover, participation in the digital economy often takes the form of short-term, freelance work. This “gig economy” consists of a myriad of apps and sites for every imaginable task or job. Digital platforms, such as Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, and Amazon Mechanical Turk, have brought disruptive change to many service industries. These platforms organize, facilitate, and broker the services provided by a dispersed workforce of hundreds of thousands of individuals (‘‘crowdwork’’). The result is an emergence of digital work that is no longer embedded in organizations and corporate structures rather, these new relations between clients (‘‘requesters’’), platform providers, and largely autonomous workers. Such new relations bring a new set of issues such as anonymity, lower costs, and algorithmic management (Duggan et al., 2020) and algorithmic accountability.
These novel modes of participation in the digital economy show some of the tensions and contradictions faced by people and workers in this space. We then ask how are they impacting people's self-determination whilst guaranteeing financial and labour security? Are workers' agency and capabilities able to flourish in the digital economy?
The session aims for a multi-stakeholder and ecosystem perspective that considers the perspectives of workers, digital entrepreneurs, academics, and policymakers. The participants and invited speakers will reflect on the concept of digital self-determination in the digital economy through in-depth dialogue.
Fairwork Podcast Series (FairWork)
Please listen to the Introduction (“Introducing the Fairwork Podcast”) and the second episode (“002: Conditions”)
Digital Economy Report, (World Employment and Social Outlook: The Role of Digital Labor Platforms in Transforming the World of Work) sub-chapters 1.2 and 1.3 and chapter 6 (ILO)
8am: Reflections and Report Back from Previous Session (Lance)
8:15am: Introduction to Participation in the Digital Economy
Opening remarks by Santiago Uribe, Christoph Lutz, Christian Fieseler, (NCIS), and Andres Lombana (ISUR)
8:25am: Sparks Session Moderated by C. Fieseler and C.Lutz
Dr. Tiago Peixoto, World Bank
Angelica Balanta, Miss Balanta
Dr. Alessio Bertolini, FairWork
8:50am: Breakout Sessions 1 and 2
Students will break out into 3 groups. Each group will meet one spark for 15 minutes and then rotate to the next spark. The objective is a direct conversation between the groups and sparks and to allow the sparks to explore their pitch/argument more deeply with each group
9:20am: 5 Minute Break
9:25am: Breakout Session 3
Students will break out into 3 groups. Each group will meet one spark for 15 minutes and then rotate to the next spark. The objective is a direct conversation between the groups and sparks and to allow the sparks to explore their pitch/argument more deeply with each group
9:40am: Sparks and Students Conversation
Sparks discuss their conversations with students, what they thought was interesting, whether they thought something new.
ISUR, NCIS
9:55am: Summary, Assignment, Next Steps
Resources for Further Consideration
Defining, Conceptualising and Measuring the Digital Economy (Centre for Development Informatics, Global Development Institute, SEED)
A content creator shares how they profit in the digital economy video (Nathaniel Drew)
Algorithmic management and app‐work in the gig economy: A research agenda for employment relations and HRM (James Duggan, Ultan Sherman, Ronan Carbery, Anthony McDonnell)
Citizen Engagement: Emerging Digital Technologies Create New Risks and Value (World Bank, Peixoto et al. 2019)
Once again, we have two assignments. Assignment 1 is the priority in terms of the proportion of your time. The second activity should probably not get more time than about an hour (unless you find yourself seduced by the power of Wikipedia--and then, well, have a blast!).
Choose one of the following activities. You are welcome (and encouraged) to work with in groups. Due Tuesday, April 13 by 2pm (EDT/Boston time).
Mapping the Digital Economy. Create a world, regional or national board map where you showcase the main influencers, content creators, search terms: what is the preferred outlet in your country? Use a Miro board (or other visual board) to map your ideas and include links to webpages. View an example: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lMqV2W4=/
Create and produce a short (5 minutes or so) podcast episode on the Digital Economy. Choose an issue you find interesting, tell a story or interview someone (a Gig worker, a digital artist, etc.). For such instances, it will be important to explain and clarify the context of what this podcast is for and acquire permissions to share (that is, please keep privacy in mind).
Explore the Gig/sharing economy in your country. Choose a gig or sharing economy platform/company that operates in your country. Write a one pager case study: What service does it offer? What is its model? Are workers employers or independent contractors? How do workers participate? Have you noticed any impacts for traditional workers in the space?
Make a video tutorial of a topic, hobby you are passionate about (cooking, book review, music instrument). Write a short reflection (1 or 2 paragraphs) identifying the digital skills required to produce such content. Discuss how the lines between personal, economic, and digital may be blurred.
Recommendations
This assignment is pretty wide open. The hope is that you use the session itself to help determine where you want to focus in terms of topic and format.
For this assignment, please use Slack to coordinate/clarify with one another what you are covering. Ideally, we don't want to have 8 projects all deal with Uber in their country.
Ideally, participants should look for region-specific platforms or localized and distinct use of digital tools to establish, maintain, expand a particular digital economy or economic practices.
Please submit your artifact using this form: https://forms.gle/EsCanYoVyys6Zx3dA
The form will require that you include a link to your assignment that is somewhere online (on a website, in a cloud-drive, etc). Please make sure if using a cloud-storage, the link settings are set to allow for people to access the document.
For this activity, you will be creating an account on Wikipedia and begin getting familiar with the editing process. The full directions can be found here. Due by Thursday, April 15 by 10am (EDT/Boston time).
Miss Balanta: Miss Balanta is the online alter-ego of Angelica Balanta, Colombian graphic and fashion designer, blogger, influencer, photographer, agent and model. Miss Balanta project was born spontaneously in 2013: Growing up seeing Afro-Colombian women wear turbans and head pieces inspired Angelica to launch a fashion blog and make video tutorials on how to wear and style Afro Colombian culture headpieces. Her videos have been watched over 170.000 times on YouTube and her IG account has over 60.000 followers. Miss Balanta is fueled by Angelica's curiosity to learn more about her Afro roots and transform items of Black culture into fashionable works of art. With her online presence and original designs Miss Balanta seeks to empower women, educate, and highlight the values of Afro culture.
Alessio Bertolini: Alessio Bertolini is a Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute for the project FairWork, where he is investigating platform work in the UK and Germany. Before joining the OII, Alessio was a postdoctoral researcher of the project ‘Work Demand: Contracting for Work in a Changing Economy’ (https://workondemand.co.uk/) headed by Prof. Ruth Dukes at the University of Glasgow. Within the broader project, Alessio had been investigating ideas and strategies used by different stakeholders and policy actors in the regulation of the platform economy in a comparative perspective.
Before joining the Work on Demand team, Alessio completed his PhD in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh on the topic of comparative labour market regulations for non-standard workers in Italy and the UK. With a background in economics and policy studies, his area of expertise involves employment and welfare rights for non-standard workers from a comparative European perspective. More broadly, his research and teaching interests include labour markets and social security policies and regulations. Both before and during his PhD, he was involved in several national and international research projects on the topic of labour market and welfare policies.
Tiago Peixoto: Tiago is a Senior Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank’s Governance Global Practice. Having joined the Bank in 2010, Tiago’s activities focus on working with governments to develop solutions for better public policies and services. Prior to joining the World Bank, Tiago has managed projects and consulted for a number of organizations, such as the European Commission, OECD, United Nations, Bertelsmann Foundation, and the Brazilian and UK governments. Formerly a research coordinator for the Electronic Democracy Centre at the University of Zurich, Tiago is currently a faculty member of New York University’s Governance Lab. A board member for Our Cities Network and Intelligent Digital Avatars, he also sits in the advisory boards of a number of organizations such as The Participatory Budgeting Project and Our City Thoughts. Featured in TechCrunch as one of the “20 Most Innovative People in Democracy”, Tiago holds a PhD and a Masters in Political Science from the European University Institute, as well as a Masters in Organized Collective Action from Sciences-Po Paris. He blogs at DemocracySpot and tweets at @participatory.
Christian Fieseler
Christian Fieseler is professor for communication management at BI Norwegian Business School and a director of the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society. He received his PhD in Management and Economics from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 2008. At the former he worked as a postdoctoral researcher, as well as at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and at Stanford University, before joining BI, in 2014. Christian’s research is focused on the question of how individuals and organizations adapt to the shift brought by new, digital media, and how to design participative and inclusive spaces in this new media regime. In this field, he has over the last years, worked extensively on technology and new collaboration modes in projects with the European Union and the Norwegian Research Council.
Christoph Lutz
Christoph is an associate professor at BI Norwegian Business School since 2018 and since 2021 co-Director at the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society. He holds a PhD in management from the University of St. Gallen (completed in 2015, summa cum laude). Between 2016 and 2018, he was an assistant professor at BI. Christoph’s research interests are broad and lie in the field of social media and Internet-mediated communication. More specifically, he investigates online participation, privacy, serendipity, scientists’ use of social media (altmetrics), the sharing economy, and social robots.
Andres Lombana
Andres holds a PhD in Media Studies from UT-Austin with concentration in digital literacy and education, a Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, and Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Literature from Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. His approach is transdisciplinary and collaborative, combining ethnographic and quantitative research methods, design-based research, and co-design. He is an assistant professor of communication at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, an associate researcher at the Centro de Internet y Sociedad de la Universidad del Rosario (ISUR) and a faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
Santiago Uribe.
Santiago completed his M.Phil. in Development, Environment and Cultural Change at the University of Oslo and holds an LLB from Universidad de los Andes in Bogota. He co-founded and was Head of Sustainability at Leaf-up.Org, a tech start-up working for climate change and food security solutions. Since 2020 he works as a researcher at the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society for the Norwegian Research Council’s funded project on Algorithmic Accountability. Santiago’s research interests focus on the ethics of digitization, surveillance, and responsible digital transformations.