Soriano, Cheryll Ruth and Cabañes, Jason Vincent. 2020. Entrepreneurial solidarities: Social media collectives and Filipino digital platform workers. Social Media + Society, 6(2), ISSN 2056-3051 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

The article examines the role of social media groups for online freelance workers in the Philippines—digital workers obtaining “gigs” from online labor platforms such as Upwork and Onlinejobs.ph—for social facilitation and collective organizing. The article first problematizes labor marginality in the context of online freelance platform workers situated in the middle of competing narratives of precarity and opportunity. We then examine unique forms of solidarity emerging from social media groups formed by these geographically spread digital workers. Drawing from participant observation in online freelance Facebook groups, as well as interviews and focus groups with 31 online freelance workers located in the cities of Manila, Cebu, and Davao, we found that online Filipino freelancers maintain active social interaction and exchange that can be construed as “entrepreneurial solidarities.” These solidarities are characterized by competing discourses of ambiguity, precarity, opportunity, and adaptation that are articulated and visualized through ambient socialities. While we argue that these entrepreneurial solidarities do not reflect a passive and simplistic acceptance of neoliberal discourses about digital labor by digital workers, the solidarities forged in these groups also work to undermine their resistive potential such that these tend to reinforce rather than impose pressure toward critical structural changes that can improve the viability of digital labor conditions.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120926484
Additional Information:	Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was supported with funding by De La Salle University-Manila’s University Research Coordination Office (Project No. DLSU-FRP.017.2018-2019.T2.CLA).
Keywords:	freelance, platform labor, gig economy, collective organization, entrepreneurial solidarities, the Philippines
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Dates:	Date Event 25 February 2020 Accepted 24 June 2020 Published Online June 2020 Published
Item ID:	36840
Date Deposited:	20 Jun 2024 10:47
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2024 11:07
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/36840

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