Last week with the Diplab team, we spent two exciting days at the European Parliament in Brussels, engaging in profound discussions with and about platform workers as part of the 4th edition of the Transnational Forum on Alternatives to Uberization.
Together, we delved into the intricacies of the human labor that fuels artificial intelligence and ensures safe participation to social media. Together, we discussed workers’ expectations, concerns and common struggles to move forward toward a world in which where technology serves all humans equally and responsibly.
Digital labor is at the heart of our evolving economies. To address the specific challenges and developments in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), we are launching a dedicated chapter of INDL for the region.
This conference provides a unique platform to present research related to the MEA region, both ongoing and/or burgeoning. The conference offers opportunities for scholars and practitioners to engage with topics such as platformization, automation, gig economy dynamics, and technology-mediated labor.
INDL-MEA will feature three tracks: one in Arabic, one in English, and one in French, reflecting the linguistic diversity of the region.
Topics
Submissions must be in reference to the MEA region, for instance: in perspective, case studies, or focus.
Submission topics may include but are not limited to
Case studies examining platforms, gig economy workers, and online digital labor in MEA
Exploring algorithmic management practices in work processes, recruiting, and HR in MEA
Issues of digital platform labor on gender and inclusion in the MEA region
Consequences of the shift to digital labor on workers, businesses, economies, and labor markets in MEA
Effects of remote work and digital labor on employee well-being and productivity in MEA
Policy responses to the rise of digital labor and automation in MEA, including regulatory measures and government intervention
Strategies for organizing digital workers and managing geographically distributed workforces in MEA
Intersectional perspectives on digital labor in MEA
Exploring AI and digital labor through a decolonial lens in MEA
Challenges posed by Generative AI to human labor in MEA
Submissions
We invite submissions of anonymized abstracts for papers, case studies, and policy briefs related to these topics. Abstracts, up to 500 words, can be submitted in Arabic, English, or French through our website INDL-MEA.
Important Dates
Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2024
Acceptance notification: February 15, 2024
Registration opens: TBA
INDL-MEA conference date: May 28, 2024
Together, let’s foster a thought-provoking dialogue and contribute to shaping the future of digital labor in the Middle East and Africa.
For more information, please see the INDL website.
I’m sooo glad to be in Berlin for the 6th edition of this beloved INDL-6 conference, which is taking place at Weizenbaum Institut!
INDL started as a small-scale, informal, little-funded project, aiming to create linkages between academics and students interested in the transformations of labour brought about by digital technologies. We first met in Paris in Spring 2017, then in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) a few months later, and in both cases, a smallish 20-people room was enough for all. Back then, we called ourselves ENDL (where E stood for “European”).
But in 2019, we partnered with Toronto-based colleagues and upgraded to INDL, moving from European to International level. We started a cycle of conferences which initially remained rather small-scaled, and for two years had to take place online owing to the pandemic crisis. Things started to change in 2022, when colleagues from Greece proposed to restart an in-person version of the conference which eventually took place in Athens. It was also the first time that we launched a call for papers, rather than just limiting ourselves to invited speakers, and the conference was a huge success, with almost a hundred participants and sessions running in parallel.
This year edition’s follows the same format, and I’m so happy to see that a large community is forming around this topic. It’s good to see some people who already attended last year or even before, together with many new faces, and numbers continuing to grow (this year, we have three instead of just two parallel sessions!).
Together with the parallel sessions, this year’s event includes three keynotes, an arts-meets-science session, and a regulation-oriented debate on due diligence processes and the technology supply chain. Weizenbaum Institut is a wonderful place and has made available funding, support, and an incredibly committed team of colleagues, students, and volunteers who are making this conference a success.
For the programme, link to the livestreaming of plenaries and main sessions, and further information, please see indl.network.
Estoy muy emocionada y feliz de empezar un ciclo de charlas en Chile, principalmente en Santiago y Talca, con Antonio A. Casilli este mes de enero. Agradezco mucho a la Embajada de Francia en Chile, al Instituto Francés de Chile, y a la Fundación Teatro a Mil por esta oportunidad maravillosa. Gracias también a Juana Torres Cierpe y a Francisca Ortiz Ruiz por su ayuda en contactar con colegas, amigos y estudiantes de Chile.
Empezaremos por una charla titulada “Plataformas digitales, trabajo en línea y automatización tras la crisis sanitaria”, que tendrá lugar el día lunes 16 de enero a las 12:00 hrs en la sede de la CUT (1 oriente # 809, Talca). En esta charla presentaremos nuestras investigaciones sobre el fenómeno del micro-trabajo fuertemente precarizado que se desarrolla en las plataformas digitales. Agradezco mucho a la profesora Claudia Jordana Contreras y a la Escuela de Sociología de la Universidad Católica del Maule por la organización de este evento.
El martes 17 enero 2023, 11:00, hablaré de “Inteligencia artificial, transformaciones laborales y desigualdades: El trabajo de las mujeres en las plataformas digitales de ‘microtareas” en el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad Católica y con el Quantitative and Computational Social Science Research Group. Gracias a Mauricio Bucca que ha organizado este evento. Estaremos en la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Campus San Joaquín.
El martes 17 por la tarde (a las 17:000 hrs), hablaré de “Ética de la inteligencia artificial y otros desafíos para la investigación sobre redes sociales” como parte de la Escuela de Verano del Centro de Investigación en Complejidad Social, Universidad del Desarrollo. Agradezco a Jorge Fábrega Lacoa y sus colegas para la organización.
El viernes 20 de enero 2023, a las 10:00 hrs, Antonio y yo hablaremos juntos de “El trabajo detrás de la inteligencia artificial y la automatización en América Latina” en un taller internacional organizado por la Universidad de Chile – con Pablo Pérez (gracias por la organización!) y Francisca Gutiérrez, sala 129, FASCO, Av. Ignacio Carrera Pinto 1045, Ñuñoa.
Sigue un evento organizado por el Instituto Francés, “La noche de las ideas”:
This week, I was pleased and honoured to give a keynote speech at wonderful EUSN2021 (European Social Networks 2021) conference. The event was originally planned in beautiful Naples, but was unfortunately moved online because of pandemic-induced uncertainties.
In my talk, I endeavoured to reconcile the tradition of research on social and organizational network analysis – in which I have been trained, and which constitutes the specialism of most participants to EUSN conferences – with the nascent literature on digital platform labour. Indeed, organizational network studies have shaped my (and many other colleagues’) understanding of how social ties and structures drive collective action and shape its outcomes. However, contemporary computing technologies breed novel sociabilities and organizational modes that disrupt established practices and knowledge. In particular, the emergence of digital platforms as market intermediaries constitutes a puzzle for network researchers. These emerging organizational structures loosen individual-organization links, fragment production processes, individualize sub-contracting, extend competition beyond the local level, and threaten jobs with AI-fuelled automation. My question then is: in these environments where isolation dominates and collaboration fades, how do social networks operate, if at all? And how can we, as researchers, apprehend them?
In my talk, I discussed how digital platforms, and the transformations of work processes they trigger, challenge some of the key tenets of organizational network analysis. Yet there is still much to learn from this tradition, and the limited overlaps with the nascent literature on platforms reveal facets that neither of them, alone, could capture. This analysis also confirms that overall, technology-enabled platform intermediation restrains sociability and limits interactions, but specific cases where networking has been possible highlight the fundamental advantages it brings to workers.
On this basis, I outlined directions for future research and policy action.
Many thanks to the organizers who still did a wonderful job despite the online-only mode, and to all attendees for inspiring questions and feedback.
I’m excited to be part of the organizing team for an upcoming conference entitled “Unboxing AI” and aiming to open – at least to an extent – the black box. What are the material conditions of AI production? Who are the multitudes of precarious workers who contribute to it in the shadow, by generating data and checking algorithmic outputs? What are the geographical areas and the social scope of the work that produces today’s intelligent technologies? These are some of the questions we aim to explore.
The first two days of the conference (November 5 and 6, 3pm – 7pm CET) will bring together highly regarded international specialists from a wide variety of disciplines (sociology, law, economics, but also the arts and humanities…). On the third day (November 7, also 3 pm – 7 pm CET), there will be a doctoral colloquium with a selection of very promising work by young researchers.
The conference was initially planned to take place in Milan in March 2020, and had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As the health situation is still critical, we have opted for an online-only version. At least, this format is cheap – no need to travel to attend – and we can welcome a more geographically diverse range of participants. Indeed the afternoon-only schedule is meant to enable colleagues from North and South America to attend.
Participation is free of charge but prior registration is required. You will find the programme as well as registration forms here (please note that there is a separate form for each of the three dates of the conference).
Just back from a stimulating summer school on social network analysis and complexity, organised in sunny Cargèse (Corsica). Lots of exciting talks on communities, network dynamics, and complex social structures, with a touch of genuine interdisciplinarity.
Just came back from the Work, Employment and Society (WES) conference 2018, that British Sociological Association (BSA) organizes every other year. Perhaps more intimate and newbie-friendly than the main BSA event, this year’s WES in Belfast was also a positive surprise in terms of its academic content. There were several sessions on the so-called ‘gig economy’ (or as one speaker put it, ‘gig economies‘), the effects of digital business models that often go under the name of ‘uberization’, and atypical forms of work.
Some lessons I am taking home:
A growing number of researchers are studying platform work – not just the most visible forms of it such as Uber drivers and Deliveroo couriers, but also those who are hidden at home: freelancers and to a lesser extent, micro-workers;
The question of how platform workers self-organize, and what can be done to improve their organization capacity, is attracting a lot of attention;
Efforts at establishing standards, fairness criteria and forms of social protection for atypical platform workers are gaining momentum;
There is a lot we can learn from research in neighboring areas: for example the distinction between employee-friendly and employer-friendly flexible work, initially developed for people in employment, is also helpful here.
What is still missing from the picture is information on the ‘long tail’ of smaller, often national rather than international, platforms, and on the workers (especially micro-workers) who use them. Besides, clients and requesters are little known – on all platforms. Estimating the size of the platform worker population remains an unresolved issue – whether at local, national or international level. A common grievance by researchers is difficulty to access crucial data from commercial platforms that use them as their private property.
As part of the upcoming NetSci2018 conference in Paris, I co-organize a satellite event that aims to foster interdisciplinary reflection on how methods from social science can be upscaled to large network structures and on how methods from complex systems can be downscaled to deal with small heterogeneous structures.
The idea is to reconcile two traditions of research that have remained separate so far. Sociology typically handles small but rich networks where a wealth of network attributes results from the complexity of the data collection design. Differences across nodes and edges enable to capture the social processes underlying network structures and their dynamics. Instead, the complex systems tradition handles large but poorly-specified networks. Assuming statistical equivalence of graph entities, a mean field treatment suffices to describe the aggregate properties of the network. Today’s network data-sets contain an unprecedented quantity of relational information within and between all possible levels: individuals, social groups, organizations, and macro entities. Such large and rich network structures expose the implicit limitations of the two above-mentioned approaches: classical sociological methods cannot be upscaled because of their heavy algorithms, and those from complex systems lose track of the multi-faceted nature of social actors, their relationships and their processes.
Our satellite event aims to move forwards, inviting an inter-disciplinary reflection and exploring ways in which these limitations can be overcome.
I co-organize this Satellite to the NETSCI2018 Conference in Paris, 12 June 2018. We are now accepting submissions of proposals for presentations.
Information on the Satellite
In traditional research paradigms, sociology handles small but rich networks where the richness of network attributes is derived from the specific buildup of the data collection process. In the sociological approach, differences among nodes and edges are key to describe network properties and the ensuing dynamical social processes. Instead, the complex systems tradition deals with large but poor networks. Assuming statistical equivalence of graph entities, a mean field treatment serves to describe the aggregate properties of the network. Today’s network datasets contain an unprecedented quantity of relational information at all, and between all, the possible levels: individuals, social groups, political structures, economical actors, etc. We finally deal with large and rich network structures that expose the implicit limitations of the two abovementioned approaches: the traditional methods from social science cannot be upscaled because of their algorithmic complexity and those from complex systems lose track of the complex nature of the actors, their relationships and their processes. This workshop has the aim of developing an interdisciplinary reflection on how methods from social science could be upscaled to large network structures and on how methods from complex systems could be downscaled to deal with small heterogeneous structures.
We are proud that five prominent international scholars are our invited speakers: Camille Roth, SciencesPo Paris; Matthieu Latapy, LIP6UPMC Paris; Alessandro Lomi, ETH Zurich; Fariba Karimi, GESIS Cologne; Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University.
Contributions
We invite abstracts of published or unpublished work for contributed talks to take place at the satellite symposium. We expect a broad range of topics to be covered, across theory, methodology, and application to empirical data, relating to an interdisciplinary reflection on how methods from social science could be upscaled to large network structures and on how methods from complex systems could be downscaled to deal with small heterogeneous structures.
Submissions are required to be at most 650 words long and should include the following information: title of the talk, author(s), affiliation(s), email address(es), name of the presenter, abstract. Papers or submissions longer than 1 page will not be accepted.
Important dates
Abstract submission deadline is March 25, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be no later than April 23, 2018.
All participants and accepted speakers will have to register through the NETSCI2018 website.
Just back from a stimulating summer school on social network analysis and complexity, organised in sunny Cargèse (Corsica). Lots of exciting talks on communities, network dynamics, and complex social structures, with a touch of genuine interdisciplinarity.
Just came back from the 
Data Big and Small 