Gig Workers and Managing App-Based Surveillance

Based on interviews with app-based gig workers, this study uses Ganesh’s managing surveillance framework to explore relentless visibility and sousveillance (e.g., resistance, activism) to understand how app-based gig workers are being watched, watch others, and experience the economics and authoritative powers of gig work. Findings demonstrate how the intentionally designed technological aspects of mobile app-based gig work and the features of algorithmic management contribute to an ecosystem wherein gig workers are relentlessly observed by their gig parent organizations, how that is perceived by gig workers, and how this creates distrust, resistance and counter-surveillance towards the organization over time. As a result, gig workers begin to conduct their own surveillance, and simultaneously make attempts to surveil the gig parent organizations, and watch those who are watching them. As such, this study proposes a sousveillance spectrum wherein initially compliant gig workers may document surveillance and over time selectively ignore the organization’s rules, both to make the most of an ambiguous employment structure and also to shirk the oversight of the parent organization. Practically, this study provides insight as to how gig workers experience surveillance, how they make efforts to regain power through their own surveillance, and activism, and how the technological aspects of app-based gig work impact casual employment.