Research

I study the role of digital technologies in simultaneously producing risks and opening opportunities for individuals, communities, and organizations. Across my research agenda, I regularly return to two phenomena: social inequality and user agency. Often, my work concerns the setting of digitally mediated work and the gig economy, in which the tension between digital technologies as a source of opportunity and risk is particularly pronounced.

The gig economy refers to the ecosystem around online platforms that connect individuals or organizations in need of a service with individuals who can provide this service. Examples of such gig platforms include sharing economy platforms (e.g. Airbnb, Uber), crowd work platforms (e.g. Amazon Mechanical Turk), and freelancing platforms (e.g. Fiverr, Upwork).

For a full list of publications, please visit my Google Scholar profile.

Digital inequality

Digital inequality is the research area that examines online participation in various online environments, aiming to uncover disparities between those who do and those who do not benefit from these opportunities.

Some of my work on digital inequality draws on national surveys to examine sociodemographic predictors for online participation. For example, in one study, co-author Dr. Eszter Hargittai and I examine engagement with remote gig work in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, which offered opportunities for income generation in the context of skyrocketing unemployment rates and physical distancing mandates. Similarly, in another project, Dr. Aaron Shaw, Dr. Eszter Hargittai and I break down to break down participation on gig platforms into four stages. That way, we are able to investigate potential barriers that people face on their way to generating income through gig platforms. Across these survey-based projects, we find that more privileged individuals (e.g., in terms of education, digital skill level) are more likely to engage in gig work. This suggests that gig platforms broaden the opportunities available to those already privileged rather than opening opportunities to individuals in need.

In addition to gig work, I have studied digital inequality in relation to other forms of online participation, such as contributions to peer-produced content and engagement with COVID-19 content.

Further, I conducted a systematic literature review synthesizing research on discrimination and digital inequality in the gig economy.

User and worker agency

While the structures provided by online platforms are powerful in their impact on the (potential) actions of the individual, individuals are far from powerless. They constantly negotiate their digital environments to envision and draw out benefits. My work examines how individuals exercise agency in navigating platforms, and how this varies by social standing and digital skill level.

Zooming in on the context of the gig economy, in this study, I leverage interviews with online freelancers to understand the role of digital skills in mitigating the risks in their work. I find that digital skills enable online freelancers to (1) optimize their use of platform tools, (2) construct alternative pathways when existing tools malfunction, and (3) imagine and blaze new paths when existing tools are limited. In the volatile labor environment of gig platforms, digital skills are necessary to allow individuals to adapt in creative ways.

Related research has examined ways that social media users have navigated and negotiated platform affordances. For example, this digital ethnographic content analysis examines how Instagram users employ the platform’s tagging features to claim and seek status. It reveals that the perfecting of one’s online presentation does not only happen by producing a high-status image, but also by concealing the “inauthentic” nature of this production. Similarly, I collaborated with Annika Pinch on an interview study that examines how individuals understand, perform, and evaluate authenticity on BeReal.

This research on user and worker agency reveals that online platforms, including gig platforms, do not always provide seamless experiences—and that individuals end up engaging in labor to bridge the gaps between platform design and practice.