Gig Expectations: Literacy Practices, Events, and Texts in the Gig Economy

Abstract

This article explores the writing and reading requirements of the literacy practices, events, and texts characteristic of work mediated by the online labor platforms of the gig economy, such as Airtasker and Freelancer, which bring together people needing a job done with those willing to do it. These emerging platform-based discourse communities and their associated literacies are a new domain of social activity. Based on an examination of seven gig economy platforms, the present article examines the core literacy event in the gig economy, the posting and bidding for tasks, together with the texts that enhance and support this process. While some tasks require written texts as the outcome or product, all tasks involve the creation of some form of written text as part of doing the work. These texts are both interactional and interpersonal. As well as being a part of negotiating and then getting a task done, they relate to the complexities of building the identities, knowledge, and relationships required of those working in a virtual work space rather than a traditional workplace. While most of these texts reflect familiar text types, the core text cycle is argued to be an “emergent” genre. Implications for education are presented.

Delivery riders’ cultural production in Spain: A thematic analysis of their self-representation on YouTube

“…Through Facebook groups or YouTube channels, new workers interact with more experienced ones, learning tactics for their daily work and for using the platforms. Some of them develop a level of expertise both in the job and in the creation of information channels (Chan, 2019), and develop as ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ (Holikatti et al, 2019) who cooperate and at the same time compete with each other to obtain job opportunities (Corbel et al, 2021).…”

Literacy education for citizenship across the lifespan

“…These developments in the digitisation of work, and especially changes to the ways that work is organised, make new demands on the literate practices of active citizenship. The trend towards casual work arrangements, often although by no means always managed through general companies like Airtasker or more specialised companies like Script using peer to peer software, has eroded working conditions like sick leave and mandated occupational health and safety requirements, leaving workers—from the least skilled to the most skilled—to fend for themselves (Corbel et al, 2021 ). To protect themselves in these circumstances, individual workers need to learn to read contracts and other documents, and to write them, in ways that protect them from exploitation and harm.…”

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

“…Furthermore, it is essential to highlight that those narratives and other aspects that make social media a virtual environment for platform workers are its design. According to Corbel et al (2022), digital platforms have the potential to define and shape the ways people develop their practices, resist exploitation, and determine what it is to be a gig worker. Therefore, another important aspect that this special issue touches on is the affordances of the labour platforms and social media platforms.…”

“…In a way, the analysis of cultural production through social media can take different readings: On the one hand, it can be a source of visibility and vindication in the face of the precariousness of these new forms of work (Chan, 2019; Corbel et al, 2022), but on the other hand, it promotes and encourages the circle of unpaid cultural production, this time under the mantra of creativity – coupled with the flexibility (Duffy, 2016). Both processes, translation (from one type of work to the other) or overlapping (combination of both jobs), imply an absorption of the precariousness of both worlds.…”