How do affordances of digital platforms shape emotional labour performed by platform-based workers?

Louise Yung Nielsen, Jo Krøjer, Mette Lykke Nielsen

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningpeer review

Abstract

This study examines how various affordances (Bucher & Helmond, 2017) of digital platforms shape the emotional labour performed by digital or platform-based workers. Drawing on 29 qualitative interviews with professional gamers, influencers, and platform workers enabled us to explore emotional labour across different types of platform-based work. The article argues that workers on social media platforms and digital labour platforms require extensive emotional labour to uphold their value in the digital labour market. To cater to the different emotional requirements within different types of digitized relations, the platform-based workers all perform multidimensional emotional labour, conceptualised as digital emotional labour. The article shows how two high-level affordances of digital platforms are significant in shaping emotional labour: the capacity to transcend physical space and the immediacy and multiplicity of the digital distribution of information and data.
OriginalsprogDansk
TidsskriftMedieKultur
ISSN0900-9671
StatusAccepteret/In press - 2024

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