Could universal basic income counter the gig economy’s problems?

13 April 2017

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

shutterstock.com Platforms like eBay, Uber, Airbnb, and Freelancer are thriving, growing the digital economy and disrupting existing business. The question is how to ensure that the transformations they entail ...
Read More Could universal basic income counter the gig economy’s problems?

Variable geographies of protest among online gig workers

13 February 2017

Authors: Alex Wood

Millions of people across the planet use online labour platforms to make their living as part of the global gig or platform economy. One part of the iLabour project ...
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Prezi – Collective Action in a Digital Era

6 February 2017

Authors: Philip Howard

Here is my Prezi on “Collective Action in a Digital Era“. Note: This post was originally published on Phil Howard's blog on 6 February 2017 11:09 am. It might ...
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Shaping the new world of work

21 November 2016

Authors: Mark Graham

The European Trade Union Institute has just put together a 40-page report that comes out of their conference on ‘Shaping the new world of work. The impacts of digitalisation ...
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It’s a matter of time: can Deliveroo deliver collective bargaining for the gig economy?

16 August 2016

Authors: Alex Wood

Last week ‘gig’ workers took to the streets in a show of public discontent. London’s Deliveroo couriers (moped or cycle riding workers who pick up food from restaurants and ...
Read More It’s a matter of time: can Deliveroo deliver collective bargaining for the gig economy?

Exploring the Ethics of Monitoring Online Extremism

23 March 2016

Authors: Bertram Vidgen

(Part 2 of 2) The Internet serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold great value to law enforcement. ...
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Controlling the crowd? Government and citizen interaction on emergency-response platforms

7 December 2015

Authors: Gregory Asmolov

There is a great deal of interest in the use of crowdsourcing tools and practices in emergency situations. Gregory Asmolov‘s article Vertical Crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing Governance of Crowds ...
Read More Controlling the crowd? Government and citizen interaction on emergency-response platforms

Does crowdsourcing citizen initiatives affect attitudes towards democracy?

22 November 2015

Authors: Henrik Serup Christensen

Crowdsourcing legislation is an example of a democratic innovation that gives citizens a say in the legislative process. In their Policy and Internet journal article ‘Does Crowdsourcing Legislation Increase Political ...
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Do Finland’s digitally crowdsourced laws show a way to resolve democracy’s “legitimacy crisis”?

16 November 2015

Authors: Taneli Heikka

There is much discussion about a perceived “legitimacy crisis” in democracy. In his article The Rise of the Mediating Citizen: Time, Space, and Citizenship in the Crowdsourcing of Finnish ...
Read More Do Finland’s digitally crowdsourced laws show a way to resolve democracy’s “legitimacy crisis”?

Can virtual workers strike? Book chapter on identity and collective action in microwork

3 November 2015

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

Tyldesley miners during the 1926 General Strike (Wikipedia) I’ve posted online a pre-print version of my upcoming chapter in Space, place and global digital work, edited by Jörg Flecker ...
Read More Can virtual workers strike? Book chapter on identity and collective action in microwork

Don’t knock clickivism: it represents the political participation aspirations of the modern citizen

1 March 2015

Authors: Max Halupka

We are surrounded by simple online participatory processes asking for our opinions through one-click online petitions, content sharing, and social buttons. Max Halupka discusses his article Clicktivism: A Systematic ...
Read More Don’t knock clickivism: it represents the political participation aspirations of the modern citizen

Finnish decision to allow same-sex marriage “shows the power of citizen initiatives”

28 November 2014

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

In a pivotal vote today, the Finnish parliament has voted in favour of removing references to gender in the country’s marriage law, making it possible for same-sex couples to ...
Read More Finnish decision to allow same-sex marriage “shows the power of citizen initiatives”

Past and Emerging Themes in Policy and Internet Studies

12 May 2014

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

What kind of research does the journal Policy & Internet publish? Editor Vili Lehdonvirta approaches the question from two angles; first, by examining the question empirically, through a brief ...
Read More Past and Emerging Themes in Policy and Internet Studies

Mapping collective public opinion in the Russian blogosphere

10 February 2014

Authors: Olessia Koltsova

Blogs are becoming increasingly important for agenda setting and formation of collective public opinion on a wide range of issues — particularly in countries like Russia where the Internet ...
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The physics of social science: using big data for real-time predictive modelling

21 November 2013

Authors: Taha Yasseri

Use of socially generated “big data” on collective states of minds in human societies has become a new paradigm in the emerging field of computational social science, but bridging ...
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Predicting elections on Twitter: a different way of thinking about the data

4 August 2013

Authors: Nick Anstead

Recently, there has been a lot of interest in the potential of social media as a means to understand public opinion. Social media monitoring, which in theory can extract ...
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Presenting the moral imperative: effective storytelling strategies by online campaigning organisations

25 June 2013

Authors: Ariadne Vromen

There has been an international growth in online campaigning organizations that engage in public policy debate and mobilize citizens. Ariadne Vromen (University of Sydney), co-author with William Coleman of ...
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Investigating the structure and connectivity of online global protest networks

10 June 2013

Authors: Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon

The rise of social networking tools, accompanied by the mass adoption of mobile devices, has strengthened the impact and broadened the reach of today’s political protests. OII researchers Sandra ...
Read More Investigating the structure and connectivity of online global protest networks

The global fight over copyright control: Is David beating Goliath at his own game?

10 June 2013

Authors: Yana Breindl

In the past few years, many governments have attempted to curb online “piracy” by enforcing harsher copyright control upon Internet users. Yana Breindl and François Briatte discuss their Policy ...
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Crowdsourcing translation during crisis situations: are ‘real voices’ being excluded from the decisions and policies it supports?

7 May 2013

Authors: Gwyneth Sutherlin

International NGOs and government actors have embraced crowdsourcing to manage the flood of information produced during crisis. However, when crowdsourced material crosses the language barrier into English, it often ...
Read More Crowdsourcing translation during crisis situations: are ‘real voices’ being excluded from the decisions and policies it supports?

Tag: Collective Action