By Siddharth Suri and Mary L. Gray Most conventional jobs involve hierarchy. A boss divvies up work to the office’s full-time employees awaiting direction and a green light. While still true for the majority of American workers, a growing number of people are picking up work online — accepting jobs with companies that assign, schedule, route, and …
Continue reading Spike in Online Gig Work: Flash in the Pan or Future of Employment?
Well, it was another exciting season of reviewing a rich batch of applications for our 2016 PhD Internship Program. We love reading about all the great work out there but really, really, really hate that we have just a few seats for our intern program. Please spread the word about this program and throw your …
I am happy to announce the release of Queering the Countryside, with exciting contributions by great scholars and edited by Brian J. Gilley, Colin R. Johnson and myself. Find it in NYU Press, or order it from Amazon. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Rural queer experience is often hidden or ignored, and presumed to be alienating, lacking, and incomplete …
Continue reading Book release: Queering the Countryside-New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies
I've got a small Op-Ed from our crowdwork research in the Sunday's Los Angeles Times' print edition, published on January 10th, 2016 . It reflects on the challenges that workers face in a world of “taskified” labor—particularly the problem of getting paid when no one’s legally on the hook for sending you your last paycheck. Full …
Continue reading LA Times Op-Ed: Your job is about to get “taskified”
APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 29, 2016 Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for advanced PhD students to join the Social Media Collective (SMC) for its 12-week 2016 Intern Program. The Social Media Collective scholars at MSRNE bring together empirical and critical perspectives to address complex socio-technical issues. Our research agenda draws on a social scientific/humanistic …
Continue reading Reminder! MSR Social Media Collective PhD Intern Call, Cycle 2016!
My collaborator, Siddharth Suri, and I have spent nearly 2 years studying a nascent but rapidly expanding piece of the platform economy that we call “crowdwork.” Right now, crowdwork — millions of people around the world working in concert with programmers issuing tasks to an API — fuels automation of the internet. This work requires people to contribute responses, …
On September 9, 2015, the Data & Society Research Institute hosted Platformation, a one-day summit that brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss platform economies and the labor that fuels them. Participants included platform business leaders, researchers, labor organization representatives, policy experts, and those contributing labor to this growing sector. You can read the full …
Continue reading Platformation: Greetings from the future of work!
As we say goodbye to the *amazzzzing* Rebecca Hoffman <serious sad face emoji>, we have the solace of welcoming Andrea Alarcón to SMC's ranks. Andrea received her MSc degree from the Oxford Internet Institute, and her BSc in online journalism from the University of Florida. She has researched ICT4D, online language barriers and data collection by international corporations in developing nations. …
Continue reading Hello Andrea (SMC’s 2015-16 Research Assistant Extraordinaire!)
Microsoft Research (MSR) is looking for a Research Assistant to work with the Social Media Collective in the New England lab, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MSR Social Media Collective consists of Nancy Baym, Sarah Brayne, Kevin Driscoll, Tarleton Gillespie, Mary L. Gray, and Lana Schwartz in Cambridge, and Kate Crawford and danah boyd in …
Well, after a truly exciting spell of reviewing an AMAZING set of applications for our 2015 PhD Internship Program, we had the absolutely excruciating task of selecting just a few from the pool (note: this is our Collective's least favorite part of the process). Without further ado, we are pleased to announce our 2015 Microsoft Research SMC PhD interns: …
Social Media Collective 