Coordinator
Prof. FUNG, Ying Him Anthony
Wei Lun Professor of Journalism and Communication,
School of Journalism and Communication,
Dean of Social Science,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Prof. CHAN, Ngai Keung Oliver
Assistant Professor,
School of Journalism and Communication,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Prof. LIN, Jian
Assistant Professor,
School of Journalism and Communication,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This panel addresses the issue of sustainability in today’s global platform economy and questions its implications for the future of work. Building on their recent research on social media and on-demand platforms, speakers will share their critical diagnosis of the labor process shaped by the prevailing discourse of influencers and the gig economy.
We propose to frame sustainability as a parameter of governance and culture to examine various forms of inequalities and challenges facing the global communities of creators and platform workers.
It refers not only to a sustainable business and platform ecology that ensures the well-being of its third-party participants but also to a digital culture that pushes its creators for good and for change.
Speakers
Prof. ABIDIN, Crystal
Professor of Internet Studies,
School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry,
Curtin University
Intercultural Influencers in East Asia and Beyond: The Future of Creator Work, Audience Segments, and Cross-Platform Cultures
Abstract: This talk introduces a new theory of “Intercultural Influencers”, drawing on the forthcoming Intercultural Influencers: Global Arbiters of Norms and Nuance (Polity) arising from a recently concluded ARC DECRA Fellowship. Intercultural Influencers are cultural arbiters arising from the ‘in between’ spaces of glocal exchange and juxtaposition, whose authority is contingent upon the documentary of experiential knowledge and commodification of cultural norms, usually mediated for a culturally displaced audience. They move across cultures, country markets, content genres, platforms, audiences, and client types, and as such, have very massive and mobile global appeal. As the influencer industry is growing mature in countries around the world, intercultural influencers emerge as cosmopolitan figures who demonstrate the potential of ‘riding on the wave’ of globalization. Drawing on comparative traditional and digital ethnography, using case studies undertaken across Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, and Tokyo between 2019–2023, this talk will take stock of the scholarship on the field of Influencers to date, and showcase the value of thinking about ‘the next generation’ of major shifts in the Influencer industry as situated in the socio-cultural milieu, to reflect on the future of creator work, audience segments, and cross-platform cultures.
Prof. VAN DOORN, Niels
Associate Professor of New Media and Digital Culture,
Department of Media Studies,
University of Amsterdam
A Sustainable Platform Fix?
Abstract: Digital platforms for on-demand work (i.e. “gig economy” platforms) emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, which cast widespread doubt on the sustainability of late stage (i.e. neoliberal and financialized) capitalism.
What some have called the “platform conjuncture” resulted from a post-crisis confluence of low interest rates, a glut of venture capital, as well as progress in cloud computing and mobile internet technology. For a decade, roughly from 2010 until 2020, platforms appeared to offer a “fix” for capital as well as labor, promising to “democratize” capitalism and to make it more sustainable: in the platform economy, one could have one’s cake and eat it too.
Yet as much critical scholarship has since demonstrated, the problem of economic sustainability isn’t easily fixed and continues to haunt platform-mediated gig economies around the globe – where both workers and platform firms struggle to stay afloat. In this talk, I draw on a 5-year research project (Platform Labor) on the platformization of low-wage labor and social reproduction in three Global North cities (Amsterdam, Berlin & New York) to reflect on the issue of sustainability in what I term the “platform fix era”. I discuss the conditions under which so-called lean or “asset light” platforms could market themselves as sustainable solutions in particular sectors and examine the unequal distribution of opportunities and risks among (heterogenous) gig workforces. The issue of sustainability, I will show, is complex and ambivalent – even more so during and after the Covid-19 pandemic that both accelerated and recalibrated existing dynamics, tensions, and developments in the platform economy. Indeed, I argue that the pandemic marked a turning point in the inchoate historiography of this phenomenon, as new questions concerning the sustainability of on-demand platforms have arisen in the pandemic’s aftermath. I end with some reflections on the potential of efforts to secure sustainable livelihoods in what is in many ways an unsustainable platform economy.