Affording worker solidarity in motion: Theorising the intersection between social media and agential practices in the platform economy

Abstract

Worker solidarity is a recurring theme in the digital labour debate. While recent studies of the on-demand platforms contribute to highlighting digital affordances in fostering solidarity among gig workers, few have explored how this works in depth and offered a theoretically informed evaluation of this potential. This study of Didi drivers in China fills this gap by looking at how agential practices amplify or constrain the effects of digital communication. We contribute to constructing a mediated framework of affordances for association, for discourse and for mobilisation to examine the process of fostering worker solidarity. Increasingly under structural constraints of platform control and state surveillance on labour activism, this article discloses the theoretical puzzle of ‘solidarity in question’ by rooting the agential practices firmly in the analysis of workers’ gender, migratory status, work experience and critical media literacy, and how they intersect with the tactical appropriation of social media to create potential.