“Have you learned your lesson?” Communities of practice under algorithmic competition

Abstract

Gig workers are typically thought of as individuals toiling in digitized isolation, not as communities of shared learning. While it’s accurate to say they don’t have the same information-sharing norms as people in traditional employment arrangements, some do gather, in part in digital communities. Online forums, in this space, have become popular sites for gathering, sharing information, and comparing practices. These behaviors provide an opportunity to examine gig workers as emergent communities of practice, and to analyze how work, identity, skills, and workspaces co-constitute each other as sociotechnical environments of work change. In this research, I examine workers’ interactions in an online forum, and focus on how they talk about scams. Analysis reveals that talking about scams is a way for workers to enact belonging in their community of practice. Victims are belittled by other workers, who frame vulnerability, and lack of foresight due to unfamiliarity with the forum itself, as a lack of authenticity. Repudiations are denunciations through which workers assert their belonging. These findings illuminate the practices of what I call “para-organizational” work, with implications for knowledge management in structures of algorithmic competition.