The Algorithm Is Not My Boss Anymore: technological appropriation and (new) media strategies in Riders x Derechos and Mensakas

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22409/contracampo.v39i1.38404

Keywords:

Technological reappropiation, digital labor, Glovo, worker’s media representation, union new communication strategies.

Abstract

This paper studies how a group of delivery workers in Barcelona were able to organize a successful traditional and a social media strategy in order to claim for their rights as wage workers. They created a union, RidersxDerechos, and they also decided to create a worker’s cooperative, Mensakas, with their own application and algorithm.  We will study how they were able to re-appropriate technology and to use digital communities to spread alternative discourses. We have used different methodologies: traditional content analysis in Media, debate analysis in Social Media, qualitative ethnography. We noticed that RidersxDerechos access to media was very successful (300 piece of news analysed) thanks to strikes and court trials, facilitating a change of perspective in the treatment of platform economy in Media. Media were following up the digital entrepreneurship rhetoric until then. Along with the traditional media strategy they developed a diversified communicative pathway in social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Goteo) that helped them to establish alliances with riders from other cities and countries. We focused on more than 25.000 tweets analysed. Finally, they proposed a new way to use technology by creating their own app and algorithms for their working cooperative, Mensakas. Crowdfunding were also used to fund it and to spread an alternative working storytelling from Silicon Valley’s.

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Author Biographies

Aina Fernàndez, Tecnocampus-Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Aina Fernandez holds a PhD in Audiovisual Communication from UAB University, Barcelona, and a Master in Information and Communication Society from UOC University. She has always combined her work in digital communication with teaching and research in media and new digital content. Also, she is the author of Lliures o vassalls. El dilema digital (Free or Vassals. The digital dilemma). 

María Soliña Barreiro, Doctora. Docente - Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

María Soliña Barreiro holds a PhD in Social Communication. She has developed research stays in ARIAS (Atelier de recherche sur l'intermédialité et les Arts du spectacle, CNRS, ENS, Sorbonne III). She is a researcher specialized in Avant-garde, working class representation in Documentary and Media, Silent Film and Cinema in Minority Languages. She has published several articles on these issues, as ‘La mirada y el peso. Iconografía de la clase obrera en Chircales y Tierra Nueva’, Cinémas d’Amérique Latine, 2017. She works as a full professor at Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

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Published

2020-04-17