Alessandro Gandini

Digital work Self-branding and social capital in the freelance knowledge economy

Existing research shows that self-branding in the knowledge economy is a key promotional device for the pursuit of self-realization in a context that reifies entrepreneurialism as the main ideological stance. However, there is still reluctance to fully acknowledge the processes of sociality that constitute self-branding practice. While the relationship between branding and the affective dynamics of social production of value fostered by the diffusion of Web 2.0 is widely acknowledged in the literature, there still seems to be a lack of understanding of the extent to which self-branding relates to social relationships in the production of socialized value for individuals. The study of self-branding practices across digital freelance professions in the knowledge economy reveals how social media has come to represent a working tool that serves the curation of a professional image and the management of social relationships via the enactment of performative practices of sociality, which exist around a shared notion of reputation as value. Here, self-branding becomes an investment in social relationships with expected return for the acquisition of a reputation. This substantially equates self-branding with what social theory calls social capital, being instrumental to secure employment in the freelance-based labour market of the digital knowledge economy.

Exploring the forms of sociality mediated by innovative technologies in retail settings

The retail setting is characterised by an increasing usage of advanced and interactive technologies (i.e. mobile apps, Near Field Communication, virtual and augmented reality, etc.) based on high connectivity, ubiquitous and contactless systems that enhance and support consumer shopping experience. As a result of the consumers interaction with technology while shopping, technology-enriched stores provide new experiences and enable different forms of sociality. The aim of this paper is to explore the forms of sociality mediated by innovative technologies in retail settings. To achieve this goal, we use a qualitative approach involving 20 young consumers in the London-based market, where technology use by this group of consumers is growing. Findings show that digitally-mediated in-store activity mainly responds to a need for advice and trust, and the forms of sociality deployed around it are essentially ephemeral, low-intensity and publicity-oriented modes of interaction that echo the principles of network sociality described by critical media theory. Evaluation of new forms of sociality in technology-enriched stores.Digital media use in store responds to a need for advice and trust.Emerging shopping experiences echo the principles of network sociality.

Sharing what? The ‘sharing economy’ in the sociological debate:

This essay introduces the subject and interpretative perspective of the monograph ‘Unboxing the Sharing Economy’, and is divided into three parts. The first part illustrates the evolution of the concept of the ‘sharing economy’ and the main analytical implications. The second part outlines the key findings of a systematic review of the literature, which indicates both that academic research on the sharing economy has expanded considerably since 2013, and that sociology’s contribution to this debate remains underdeveloped and somewhat incoherent. The final part both locates the contributions to the monograph in the context of other studies and summarizes its content.

Social Recruiting: Control and Surveillance in a Digitised Job Market

Based on an international research project on the uses of digital technologies by job seekers and recruiters, this chapter questions how social media intervene in the matching of demand and supply in various sectors of the job market. Results indicate that social network sites represent a key interface for all parties involved, as job seekers actively engage in social media activity to find job opportunities, and recruiters similarly declare using social media for purposes of screening. The chapter argues this amounts to a form of pre-emptive control on the side of recruiters that enables them to access an unprecedented set of information about prospective candidates and use social media as spaces of observation and surveillance.

Working Online: An Exploration of Social Recruiting and Digital Marketplaces

This chapter evidences how the practices of job search and recruitment within and beyond the networked knowledge economy are being partially or entirely reterritorialised as a result of the intermediation of online resources, and how these are principled on an analogous notion of reputation as value. This is illustrated via the discussion of empirical data from an international study on social recruiting, and a case study exploration of a digital marketplace for contractors, Elance. These examples evidence how the broad knowledge labour market is founded on the logic of the reputation economy and envisages how this promises to remain central in the next decades, simultaneously warning against the risks of an ‘algocracy’ based on the fetishism for algorithms and online rankings.

Looking for a Job Online. An International Survey on Social Recruiting

The paper examines the use of social network sites as a new channel for job search and hiring, looking at the implications this has on candidates and recruiters. This will be done thanks to an online survey, conducted between March and June 2014, which collected responses from more than 17.000 candidates and 1500 recruiters from 24 countries and which includes a specific focus on the dynamics concerning Italy. The main questions this article tackles are: what kind of candidates and firms use social media in the recruitment process; what is the effectiveness of social media in the matching between supply and demand in the labour market; how candidates represent themselves online and how their digital reputation impacts on job search, potentially changing the role of social capital in social recruiting.

Sharing our way into the future

This brief, conclusive essay outlines the challenges that lie ahead of sociology as a discipline in its approach towards the ‘sharing economy’ and its emergent practices. Using the research displayed in the monograph, we offer a set of reflections that should read as a call to arms for sociological research to embrace the ‘sharing turn’ in a comprehensive manner.

Shopping as a “networked experience”: an emerging framework in the retail industry

The purpose of this paper is to devise a comprehensive framework of the emergent shopping experience as the result of the combination of store access and the use of communication technologies, particularly social media.,The paper builds on a set of 20 semi-structured interviews to London-based young consumers aged 18-23 and adopts an exploratory approach aimed at understanding the broad relationship between retailing and social media use.,The findings highlight how an intensive use of social media and digital communication technologies emerges as an integral part of the shopping experience inside and outside the store.,Drawing upon the notion of the “experience economy,” scholars and practitioners are actually pushed to reconsider the role of traditional shopping as in-store experience that is evolving fast as an effect of the continuous progress into communication technologies. This concept contributes to knowledge development by linking research in retail with work in the area of consumer culture.,Marketers and retailers should consider that the shopping experience is no longer limited to the physical point of sale. This means that retailers should be able to provide a shopping experience that is natively networked.,The authors identify the emerging “networked experience” of shopping, which derives from the consumers’ widespread usage of new communication technologies to collect information, their willingness to share part of this information with others, while creating new digitally mediated relationships with retailers.

Labour process theory and the gig economy

What are the distinctive traits that characterize work(ing) through (and for) a digital platform? In the burgeoning debate on the ‘gig economy’, a critical examination that comprehensively addresses this issue beyond specific examples or case studies is currently missing. This article uses labour process theory – an important Marxist approach in the study of relations of production in industrial capitalism – to address this gap. Supported by empirical illustrations from existing research, the article discusses the notions of ‘point of production’, emotional labour and control in the gig economy to argue that labour process theory offers a unique set of tools to expand our understanding of the way in which labour power comes to be transformed into a commodity in a context where the encounter between supply and demand of work is mediated by a digital platform, and where feedback, ranking and rating systems serve purposes of managerialization and monitoring of workers.

Innovation in consumer-computer-interaction in smart retail settings

Editorial introducing the special issue of Computers in Human Behavior on Innovation in consumer-computer-interaction in smart retail settings.