To start, why do we focus on the socio-technical issues in the gig economy? According to socio-technical theory and the social informatics approach, there are complex interactions and relationships between the social subsystem (i.e., gig workers) and the technical subsystem (i.e., platforms). Moreover, two subsystems are in a relationship of mutual shaping.

On one hand, the platform-mediated gig economy provides a means of employment and a source of income for many people who might be otherwise unable to participate the job market, as it levels the playing field, removing many barriers for disadvantaged groups (such as young people, seniors, women, and disabled workers), as well as for workers from depressed regions and less developed countries. On the other hand, there are power asymmetries in the gig economy because platform companies engage in sophisticated algorithmic management where they control access to labor  and clients and collect and make use of vast amounts of information . They keep a proportion of job-earnings, regulate who can use their platforms, and control communications between service providers and service consumers. It is important to shed light on the social aspects of working with algorithms and elucidate the intended and unintended consequences of this new form of management.

By conducting a systematic literature review (https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24868) that focused on gig economy, gig work, and gig workers, we found that the gig economy research is very international and multidisciplinary. Most of the research was conducted in the US and in Asian countries. Scholars from information science, information systems, computer science, to labor studies and sociology all have been contributing to knowledge about gig economy. Besides the traditional gig workers like rideshare drivers and delivery workers, more and more research has turned to other kinds of occupations producing distinctive findings about new types of gig workers, such as beauty workers, online English teacher, and legal consultants.

By manually coding 132 selected papers, we extracted three main themes, eight codes, and 30 subcodes as representative socio-technical issues in the platform-mediated gig economy. The definitions and examples for each theme, code, and subcode with more details can be found in the finding section in the paper.

As we counted the frequency for each subcode, the results show that different socio-technical issues have different amount of presence in the current literature. Some socio-technical issues are studied and discussed more (e.g., flexibility & autonomy, surveillance & monitoring, and algorithmic control) comparing to other ones (e.g., trust, fairness, and equality).

We also found that gig workers develop online communities where they share their knowledge about gig work, platform governance, and algorithmic control. In this way, gig workers can cope with the information and power asymmetries inherent in gig work.

We would like to see more work investigating these issues. Looking forward to the future, how AI-powered algorithmic management will transform the future of work? Will AI lead to even more precarious work in the gig economy? Regarding big data analytics, how do we protect gig workers’ right of privacy and guarantee the accountability of algorithms? What kind of policies and regulations are needed to ensure digital justice? Now is the time to discover the social aspects of working with algorithms!

This article is a translation of: Dedema, M., & Rosenbaum, H. (2024). Socio‐technical issues in the platform‐mediated gig economy: A systematic literature review. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24868