Queer survivalscapes under platformisation: navigating heteronormative power in Chinese digital space

From flatmates to realestate? Platform capitalism and the transformation of share housing

This panel brings together scholars whose work seeks to tame platform capitalism understanding how the lives of platform workers are affected by digital platforms. Research on platform labor has been mostly done in the global north, as well as in relation to global platforms like Uber or Amazon (Rosenblat 2019; Scholz 2016). Thus, the panelists, moreover, explore how the lives of platform workers can be improved within the global platform economy by analyzing workers’ subjectivities in relation to platforms and the impact of technologies in job quality. To achieve this, this panel brings together scholars from global north and south countries that will map the complexities and subjectivities of platform workers in order to tame platform capitalism. We present a set of articles that address: (1) regulatory resistance that clarifies and redefines the rules that platforms need to abide by; (2) bottom-up resistance of platform workers who seek to organize, subvert, and build alternatives; (3) the ways that action research can support either of those initiatives to ultimately tame some of the worst excesses of platform capitalism.

This article examines how platform capitalism mediates the emotional and moral experiences of donors within Indonesia’s digital philanthropy ecosystem. Drawing on digital ethnography and semi-structured interviews with active donors across platforms such as Kitabisa, Instagram, and TikTok, the research identifies three interrelated dynamics: immediate empathic resonance triggered by visual content, a sense of moral urgency shaped by platform logics, and emotional fatigue that often results in selective disengagement. Findings show that while emotionally charged narratives effectively mobilize donations, they also risk commodifying compassion and exhausting donors psychologically, raising concerns about the sustainability of affective giving. The study foregrounds how digital empathy is not merely a spontaneous emotion, but a socially structured and platform-mediated practice shaped by religious norms, user interface design, and algorithmic incentives. By framing empathy as a collective ethical engagement, this study contributes to critical debates on emotional labor, platform governance, and the moral economy of digital giving. It also calls for platform architectures that support donor well-being, ensure ethical representation, and foster more equitable forms of digital solidarity within Indonesia’s evolving philanthropic landscape.

This study examines the gendered political economy of fame, self-branding, and affective labor in platformized entertainment through Born for the Spotlight (2024), a rare Chinese-language Netflix serial that fuses reality TV, documentary, and scripted drama. Set within Taiwan’s low-budget media ecology, the show follows female contestants who perform affective labor and navigate precarious alliances in a media environment in which emotional intensity is monetized. Three interconnected dimensions anchor the textual and paratextual analysis: popular feminism, reality TV authenticity, and meta-drama. First, popular feminism circulates as self-branding and personal empowerment within neoliberal media cultures, while reimagining womanhood beyond the tropes of housewives and financially independent women. The serial foregrounds intersectional gender politics and celebrates solidarity sisterhood, revealing new feminist possibilities in the Sinophone mediascape. Second, the reality TV form emphasizes affective truth and emotional transparency, framing each diva’s persona as a negotiation between authenticity and performance. Finally, meta-drama—centered on agents, producers, and directors—exposes the backstage mechanisms of casting, negotiation, and labor, turning industry insiders into narrative agents. This study concludes that Born for the Spotlight functions as both metatext and critique, illuminating the contradictions of feminist discourse and female labor under platform capitalism.

With the digitalization of the economy and society, varieties of "platform capitalism" appeared in the world. The article presents the first attempt at a critical understanding of the "gig economy" model that is taking shape in contemporary Russia. By problematizing the narratives that dominate foreign studies of platform employment, the author shows the embeddedness of platformization in the current economic system. Unlike countries with a developed market economy, labor platforms in Russia are part of giant platform ecosystems controlled by oligarchic businesses and the state, which, in the course of "creeping nationalization", increases its influence through ownership and management structures. In key sectors of platform employment, quasi-monopolies are formed with the dominance of one company. In the context of geopolitical tensions, the process of "sovereignization" and the closure of the platform economy is being completed. Having successfully platformized informal labor markets in some sectors, platforms are becoming a tool for the legalization of employment in the hands of the state, driven primarily by fiscal interests. In Russia, a neoliberal model of regulation of the gig economy is being formed based on the legal introduction of the category of 'self-employed' in the absence of due attention to labor rights and the social protection of workers. With the strengthening of the authoritarian nature of the state, the possibilities of self-organization and collective defense of the interests of platform workers are blocked. The author concludes that in the Russian model of "platform capitalism", the state enters an alliance with big capital and consumers against labor: the state strengthens control over the economy and tax revenues, large platform companies use labor at lower costs, and consumers receive cheap services through convenient digital services. The author calls for an integration of the issues of platform capitalism into broader discussions about the Russian model of socio-economic development.

This article examines the under-explored role of the state in enabling platform capitalism by analysing Microsoft's infrastructural investment in Greece, as part of the country's post-pandemic ‘National Recovery and Resilience Plan: Greece 2.0’. While much of the critical literature emphasises platform companies’ control over infrastructure and data, we argue that state facilitation is a crucial component of platform capital accumulation. Through a case study of Microsoft's construction of three data centres in the region of Attica, we show how the Greek state actively facilitated this investment, framing it as a driver of modernisation and economic recovery. We base our study on a comprehensive document analysis of official communications, regulatory frameworks and legal documents. This involvement exemplifies how semi-peripheral states like Greece, shaped by neoliberal restructuring and economic dependence, contribute to consolidating the power of tech corporations, often at the expense of local communities and the environment. By integrating theories of state capitalism and techno-colonialism with critical platform scholarship, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of the political economy of platform capitalism, revealing the symbiotic yet exploitative nature of state-tech partnerships and urging a re-centring of the state's role in facilitating corporate dominance over digital infrastructures and global platform capitalism.

This article examines how dating applications operate as libidinal infrastructures that restructure and commodify intimacy within platform capitalism, using The Tinder Swindler as a cultural case study. Employing a visual-narrative approach within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, the film is analyzed to reveal the structural exploitation of user affect and desire. Grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis and Baudrillard’s simulation theory, the study argues that these platforms capitalize on the subject’s ontological lack (manque) which fuels desire as the desire for the Other’s desire. This psychic lack sustains a perpetual pursuit of recognition that can never be fulfilled. The swindler’s hyper-curated persona, a Baudrillardian simulacrum, demonstrates how the platform’s logic can be used to manipulate emotional vulnerability. Tinder transforms yearning into a site of value extraction through cyclical, addictive engagement. The findings show that users perform affective labor, such as curating profiles, optimizing self-presentation, and managing emotional availability, while behavioral data is continuously harvested. Ultimately, this article contends that the digital subject must reclaim the opacity of desire and resist the imperative of constant affective transparency as a form of critical refusal against algorithmic governance over the intimate self.

To labor in platform capitalism is to optimize. Based on 66 semi-structured interviews conducted over 8 years with data scientists, software engineers, and content creators at BuzzFeed and Upworthy, this article conceptualizes optimization as a mode of algorithmic labor that emerges in response to the platformization of cultural production, distinguishing between three principal modes of social media optimization: presentational optimization, content optimization, and self-optimization. Through a detailed examination of BuzzFeed and Upworthy’s optimization practices, I argue that in platform capitalism media workers come to act, think, and labor like software engineers rather than journalists, editors, or other traditional categories of media work.

This paper engages with debates in academic literatures over Industry 4.0 (i4.0) and the Future of Work (FoW), critiquing their development in practical isolation from each other despite i4.0 recently coming to resemble in policymaking a widely adopted narrative for the FoW in the digital age. We argue that beyond their own individual inadequacies, both approaches have common failings. We conceptualise the role of i4.0 in shaping the FoW in terms of the development of global value chains and i4.0’s implications for their digitalisation, where there is an underdeveloped analysis of change. We argue that the clearest expression of i4.0 is in the impact of ‘platform capitalism’, which already has implications for workers in the Global South and which, via i4.0’s digital integration with production, will potentially have significant implications for the quality of work in the Global North.

This qualitative study explores how classroom teachers enact leader identities within virtual communities of practice (vCoPs), introducing the concept of virtual teacher leadership (VTL) as an emergent and affectively mediated identity process. Thirteen actively teaching participants from eight Arab countries were recruited from a global vCoP and engaged in in-depth semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis revealed five interrelated dimensions of VTL: psychological safety as the foundation for leadership emergence, relational affirmation as a mechanism of identity recognition, quiet authority enacted through invisible labor, emotional labor as a pathway to legitimacy, and marginal positioning as a source of agency. Contrary to dominant narratives of teacher leadership that emphasize visibility, strategic action, or alignment with institutional goals, VTL emerged as a decentralized, relational practice grounded in care, presence, and sustained contribution. Leadership was not self-assumed but conferred through peer acknowledgment and enacted through iterative acts of trust and support. These findings reframe leadership not as a static role but as a fluid process of becoming—situated within digital ecologies and shaped by peripheral professional identities. The study challenges conventional frameworks of teacher leadership and advances a more nuanced, context-responsive understanding of leadership in networked professional spaces.

This essay examines paid care labor that typically assists older adult individuals in performing the activities of daily living. I make the case that emotional labor is constitutive of ancillary care and that some emotion-based utterances are communicative actions in the sense intended by Jürgen Habermas. However, communicative action is undermined because of the manner in which ancillary care is organized. I discuss why this is problematic and suggest ways to enhance the goals of ancillary care by granting communicative action a greater role within caregiving.

This essay examines paid care labor that typically assists older adult individuals in performing the activities of daily living. I make the case that emotional labor is constitutive of ancillary care and that some emotion-based utterances are communicative actions in the sense intended by Jürgen Habermas. However, communicative action is undermined because of the manner in which ancillary care is organized. I discuss why this is problematic and suggest ways to enhance the goals of ancillary care by granting communicative action a greater role within caregiving.

This article investigates Government Regulation No. 17 of 2025 on child protection in Indonesia, particularly regarding digital platforms and platform capitalism. Using Cultural Political Economy and Critical Discourse Analysis, the study shows how the state, through this regulation, aims to reclaim authority from global platform algorithms, presenting it as child protection. The state acts as both protector and regulator within the data economy, positioning children as strategic assets. Through this regulation, the state incorporates platform capitalism into the national administrative framework, creating a layered surveillance structure among state, family, and platforms. The research identifies tensions between child protection objectives and policy implementation ramifications, while highlighting civil society reactions and enforcement gaps. The findings contribute to digital rehegemony theory, showing Global South countries often integrate platform capitalism into national policy without challenging algorithmic exploitation.

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar as mudanças no mundo do trabalho do jornalista no cenário do crescimento do trabalho digital e capitalismo de plataforma. Ainda sob os efeitos da crise de 2007, o processo de reestruturação do sistema de produção capitalista tem provocado mudanças na base sociotécnica que indica transformações estruturais na sociedade. O binômio comunicação e trabalho é a abordagem teórico-metodológica para compreender essas inovações na geração de valor do capital, o qual não pode prescindir de processos comunicacionais para a própria existência das plataformas e, consequentemente, na cadeia global de valor.

The influence of global digital platforms today has brought attention to their growing significance as critical infrastructures of urban societies. This paper addresses the different ways that platforms are coming into focus, evidenced by growing literatures on platform capitalism, the platform society, platform surveillance, and platform urbanism. Navigating this platform pivot, I discuss the way platform influence is predominantly linked to processes of data‐driven commodification and value extraction, as demonstrated by the global growth of major platforms such as Google, Facebook, Uber, and Amazon. But at the level of the everyday, platform influence also shapes socio‐spatial experience through intentional design tactics designed to facilitate highly participatory ecosystems of interaction. I argue that by instituting relational dynamics between code, commerce, and corporeality, platforms remediate the “technological everyday” in powerful ways. This perspective points to the need for diverse epistemologies through which to critically reflect on the geographical implications of this pivot towards platforms.