The growth and rapid spread of online platforms for mediating paid work has led to the emergence of a new group of workers who experience modified forms of employment relations, novel patterns of work, and re-cast working lives. These are today's crowd workers. However, while the impact of digital technology on work and society has been a topic of huge debate (e.g. Mason 2015; Srnicek and Williams 2015; Osborne and Frey 2013), up to now there has been very little empirical research examining the people actually performing labour via online platforms – that is, the characteristics of the crowd workforce. What little previous research there is has tended to concentrate on workers on particular platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk or other online-work platforms (Berg 2016; Eurofound 2015; Ipeirotis 2010; Irani 2015; Salehi, et al. 2015; Zentz 2015), or has taken more journalistic forms, focussing on the experiences of individuals or small groups of crowd workers (DePillis 2014; Kessler 2014; Osbourne and Farrell 2016; Rich 2013; Shontell 2011). So far, empirical research has not attempted to investigate the scale or characteristics of the overall, emerging crowd workforce, considered as a section of the contemporary working class.
This paper will present findings from ongoing research which represents the first attempt to estimate the scale of crowd work in Europe. So far, surveys have been conducted in five EU countries (UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Netherlands). These surveys have produced a sample of crowd workers which is independent of any specific platform, and which includes participants in a range for different types of crowd work. Consequently, findings give unique insights into both the extent and characteristics of crowd work in Europe. It is expected that further national surveys will have been completed by the time of ILPC 2017, the findings of which will be incorporated into the final paper.
The paper will focus on characteristics of the crowd workforce, examining issues such as demographic profile, type(s) of work undertaken, frequency of crowd work, income levels, and the relationship between crowd work and other forms of employment. Conclusions will be drawn about who is doing what work, and tentative conclusions will also be drawn concerning drivers behind the growth of participation in forms of crowd work.
The paper will also address conceptual and theoretical issues around the continuity and/or discontinuity of crowd work with other forms of paid labour, and articulations of digital and non-digital labour.
References
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