The Performative Power of Digital Nursing Platforms: Norms, Values and Identities in Alternative Work Realities

ABSTRACT Feminised sectors such as healthcare are underrepresented in labour platform research. This study focuses on emerging platforms for licensed nurses and combines a multimodal analysis of the promotional materials of 12 Dutch nursing platforms with interviews with platform directors and representatives. Our analysis shows how nursing platforms construct ‘alternative work realities’ that include features of seamless integration of work and private life, individualism, quantifiable professionalism and a predictable workforce. We demonstrate how interplays of modes, such as text, layout and interaction options, make the alternatives experiential and relatable for both nurses and care organisations, granting them performative power. By making alternative work settings relatable and accessible, nursing platforms introduce novel norms, values and identities to nursing work, thereby engaging in governance of work. This enables nurses to renegotiate traditional norms of self‐sacrifice and altruism, yet it simultaneously normalises new forms of unpaid work and social and economic risks.