Cooperative affordances: How instant messaging apps afford learning, resistance and solidarity among food delivery workers

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the practices and meanings associated with the creation and use of private chat groups on instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and WeChat that are accessible only to platform workers of online food delivery services. We draw on participant observation in five countries (Italy, Spain, Mexico, China, and India), in-depth interviews with 68 food delivery couriers and digital ethnography ( Pink et al., 2015 ) within dozens of online private chat groups of food delivery workers. Our fieldwork shows that private chat groups are extremely relevant in the daily work of delivery workers and are appropriated to restore forms of mutualism not afforded by the food delivery apps. Following Costa (2018) and her concept of affordances- in-practice, we describe how the practice of online private chat groups created by platform workers affords: (1) the emergence of communities of practice; (2) resistance and contempt; (3) mutualism and solidarity. We argue that these workers ‘enact’ the affordances of instant messaging apps, to supplement – from below – the affordances of food delivery apps that were denied or ignored by food delivery companies. We argue that these affordances constitute cooperative affordances. This concept captures the cooperative nature of peer-to-peer communication that occurs within the informal online chat groups created by the workers themselves. Finally, this article contributes to affordance theory by highlighting how affordances are not immanent properties of artifacts, or ‘invariants’, as argued by Gibson (1979) , but can be ‘enacted’ by specific users, like food delivery workers, within specific social and cultural contexts.

Workers organizing in the platform economy: Local forms and global trends of collective action

“…Numerous case studies document these protest actions. It is also shown by Vandaele (2021), that activist groups and mainstream unions tend to maintain collaborative relationships in Central and Nordic countries, whereas they are often conflictual in Western countries, where workers' self‐organizing within local communities plays an important role (Bonini et al., 2023; Briziarelli, 2018; Cini, 2023; Cini et al., 2022; Grohmann, 2021; Jesnes et al., 2021; Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020; Vandaele et al., 2019). Eastern European countries have seen relatively few collective actions in general (except for Poland, with 15 protests registered).…”

Social media and platform work: Stories, practices, and workers’ organisation

“…With regards to the second viewpoint of the special issue, Bonini et al (2023) present a discussion about how food delivery workers use private chat groups to supplement the affordances of food delivery apps. Their multi-sited ethnography carried out on in different cities of countries of the Global South and Global North (India, China, Mexico, Spain, and Italy) argues that these chat groups constitute cooperative affordances: the way that food delivery workers restore forms of mutualism not afforded by the food delivery apps.…”

“…In the contemporary platform labour world, social media affordances enact communicational cultures and are enacted by them. Bonini et al (2023) have shown how workers appropriate of instant messaging apps to deal with the affordances of food delivery apps, which are designed with important constraints to workers’ action possibilities. As app designers establish the possibilities of how workers should do their tasks, ‘couriers are able to “decode” these affordances (Shaw, 2017) by negotiating or subverting their meanings, even to the point of appropriating them for purposes not intended by the designers’ (Bonini et al, 2023: 5).…”

“…Bonini et al (2023) have shown how workers appropriate of instant messaging apps to deal with the affordances of food delivery apps, which are designed with important constraints to workers’ action possibilities. As app designers establish the possibilities of how workers should do their tasks, ‘couriers are able to “decode” these affordances (Shaw, 2017) by negotiating or subverting their meanings, even to the point of appropriating them for purposes not intended by the designers’ (Bonini et al, 2023: 5). This tactical appropriation of social media to deal with labour platform constraints is a common element alongside platform work studies (Grohmann and Araujo, 2021).…”

Devaluing, Outsorting, Separating

“…Ein anschauliches Beispiel, an dem sich eine solche Umverteilung von Handlungsmacht innerhalb algorithmischer Kontexte vorführen lässt, stammt aus China. Dort haben Kurier:innen eine Chatgruppe gegründet, um schwer zugängliche Gegenden zu markieren, die meist nicht innerhalb der automatisierten Zeitvorgaben zu erreichen sind(Bonini et al 2023). 4 Als Lösung hat sich eine kollektive Praxis der Weiterdelegierung von Lieferungen in kaum erreichbare Gebiete etabliert: Anfragen werden von mehreren ridern in Folge abgewiesen, bis der Auftrag mit einer höheren Entlohnung vom Algorithmus an sie zurückgegeben wird.…”