"At the end of the day, I am accountable": Gig Workers' Self-Tracking for Multi-Dimensional Accountability Management

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hernandez, Rie Helene, Song, Qiurong, Kou, Yubo, Gui, Xinning
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913290349707264
author Hernandez, Rie Helene
Song, Qiurong
Kou, Yubo
Gui, Xinning
author_facet Hernandez, Rie Helene
Song, Qiurong
Kou, Yubo
Gui, Xinning
contents Tracking is inherent in and central to the gig economy. Platforms track gig workers' performance through metrics such as acceptance rate and punctuality, while gig workers themselves engage in self-tracking. Although prior research has extensively examined how gig platforms track workers through metrics -- with some studies briefly acknowledging the phenomenon of self-tracking among workers -- there is a dearth of studies that explore how and why gig workers track themselves. To address this, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews, revealing how gig workers self-tracking to manage accountabilities to themselves and external entities across three identities: the holistic self, the entrepreneurial self, and the platformized self. We connect our findings to neoliberalism, through which we contextualize gig workers' self-accountability and the invisible labor of self-tracking. We further discuss how self-tracking mitigates information and power asymmetries in gig work and offer design implications to support gig workers' multi-dimensional self-tracking.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_19436
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle "At the end of the day, I am accountable": Gig Workers' Self-Tracking for Multi-Dimensional Accountability Management
Hernandez, Rie Helene
Song, Qiurong
Kou, Yubo
Gui, Xinning
Human-Computer Interaction
Tracking is inherent in and central to the gig economy. Platforms track gig workers' performance through metrics such as acceptance rate and punctuality, while gig workers themselves engage in self-tracking. Although prior research has extensively examined how gig platforms track workers through metrics -- with some studies briefly acknowledging the phenomenon of self-tracking among workers -- there is a dearth of studies that explore how and why gig workers track themselves. To address this, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews, revealing how gig workers self-tracking to manage accountabilities to themselves and external entities across three identities: the holistic self, the entrepreneurial self, and the platformized self. We connect our findings to neoliberalism, through which we contextualize gig workers' self-accountability and the invisible labor of self-tracking. We further discuss how self-tracking mitigates information and power asymmetries in gig work and offer design implications to support gig workers' multi-dimensional self-tracking.
title "At the end of the day, I am accountable": Gig Workers' Self-Tracking for Multi-Dimensional Accountability Management
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19436