2019/03/26 by Ping Sun · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Health Professions · Business, Management and Accounting · #Digital Economy and Work Transformation #Employment and Welfare Studies #Sharing Economy and Platforms
paper · doi:10.1080/17544750.2019.1583676
openalex publication_date 2019/03/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
This study examines the use of “algorithms in everyday labor” to explore the labor conditions of three Chinese food delivery platforms: Baidu Deliveries, Eleme, and Meituan. In particular, it examines how delivery workers make sense of these algorithms through the parameters of temporality, affect, and gamification. The study also demonstrates that in working for food delivery platforms, couriers are not simply passive entities that are subjected to a digital “panopticon.” Instead, they create their own “organic algorithms” to manage and, in some cases, even subvert the system. The results of the approach used in this study demonstrate that digital labor has become both more accessible and more precarious in contemporary China. Based on these results, the notion of “algorithmic making and remaking” is suggested as a topic in future research on technology and digital labor.