Online platform work is the world’s fastest growing form of employment. Last year the amount of work mediated by online platforms grew by 26%. In modern economies, this is helping to accelerate a transformation from traditional employment to more flexible and, in many instances, more precarious digitally-enabled forms of work.
As online workers seek to increase their earnings, and when competition for work intensifies, the burden is on the worker to constantly update and improve their skills. The skills they need range from the subtleties of platform use and self-promotion, to substantive skills such as programming languages and graphic design techniques. Yet we know very little about how crowdworkers acquire and develop their skills. The project team will interview 80 crowdworkers, conduct surveys, and interview other stakeholders to shed light on crowdworkers’ skill development practices and on how platforms match skills with demand. Among other things, the results will reveal if existing forms of capital (technical, economic, cultural and social) matter or if new crowdworkers are able to acquire these advantages as they work online. The project team will then assess the policy implications of evidence.
Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research
Project role: Principal Investigator
Vili Lehdonvirta examines the politics and socio-economic impacts of digital technologies. He is one of the world's most cited authors on gig work and the platform economy. His current research deals with the geopolitics of digital infrastructures.
Copenhagen Business School
Project role: Co-Investigator
Former Researcher
Project role: Researcher
Huw's interests and projects can be broadly described as digital sociology - the study of how society shapes technology and vice versa, with ongoing collaboration with Rebecca Eynon.
Former
Project role: Research Assistant
Laura Larke is a social theorist. She uses qualitative methods to explore digital learning practices and computing education policy.
Former Research Associate
Project role: DPhil Student
Siân Brooke's research interests are largely within sociology and gender. Siân’s doctoral research focused on the construction of gendered identity on the pseudonymous web, and she is collaborating with Kathryn Eccles on feminist data science.
Former DPhil Student
Project role: DPhil Student
Julian is interested in the future of work, particularly skill development and matching on online labour markets. Alongside his DPhil, he worked as a research assistant for the CrowdLearn research project.
Cedefop’s CrowdLearn study is the first to examine skills development and skill matching practices in online platform work. It presents evidence from interviews with platform economy stakeholders, as well as crowdworkers themselves.
