The politics of sharing: Sociotechnical imaginaries of digital platforms

Abstract

This paper looks at the role of sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding the governance of the sharing economy in two different locations: Canada and United States. Policy makers are trying to tackle the sharing economy without potentially creating negative impact on innovation. While much of the recent discourse around the sharing economy portrays it negatively, early peer-to-peer digital platforms were envisioned as new pathways toward grassroots, inclusive, fair and low-impact economies (Schor, 2016). However Jasanoff & Kim argue that the evaluation of the positive and negative aspects of technological change have always been influenced by specific tacit or explicit political imaginations of nations in terms of how to power modern social life (Jasanoff & Kim, 2013, p. 190). Using a comparative approach, this paper analyzes these imaginations as they are expressed through policy reports and recommendations. The study shows that the sharing economy appears to be seeking a set of diverse imaginaries including new economic freedom, sustainable consumption, decentralized society, demise of social hierarchies and regulatory freedom.

A comparative analysis of data governance: Socio-technical imaginaries of digital personal data in the USA and EU (2008–2016)

“…To undertake our analysis of U.S. and EU imaginaries, we examined the framing of personal data by institutional stakeholders in policy documents (Pickersgill, 2011;Hassan, 2020). As Jessop (2004) and Jasanoff (2015) note, institutional stakeholders (e.g.…”

“…Our concern is with socio-technical imaginaries as developed by Jasanoff andKim (2009, 2015) and others (e.g. Pickersgill, 2011;Hilgartner, 2015;Birch, 2019;Hassan, 2020;Hodson and McMeekin, 2021). Jasanoff andKim (2009, 2015) and Jasanoff (2015) conceptualize socio-technical imaginaries as "collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology" (Jasanoff, 2015: 6).…”

Verschillende benaderingen van platformwerk: Een literatuuronderzoek

“…Anderzijds stellen academici voor dat platformwerk een van de typen werk is onder het paraplubegrip deeleconomie (bijv. Acquier et al, 2017;Hassan, 2020). Het verschil tussen klus-en platformwerk blijkt echter minder duidelijk te zijn.…”

Emergent Governance: Competition Policy as Platform Regulation

“…Ultimately, the regulatory proposals taken up by the policy establishment were largely confined to economic regulation. These policy debates produced a set of policy ideas and values vis-à-vis platform oversight that coalesced around a governance paradigm constructed by an interpretive community (Hassan et al, 2020) of policy experts. Rooted in competition policy, the framework discarded some of the bolder proposals, like structural separation, in deference to market mechanisms and narrower economic regulations, like mandated interoperability.…”