Datafication can be defined as the process of capturing, appropriating and processing user information for different capitalist purposes (Cukier and Mayer-Schoenberger, 2013; Van Dijck, 2017). In our ongoing research “Datafication of the work activity of media workers in their productive arrangements” we seek to understand the datafication of work activities. Specifically, we put a magnifying glass on the digital machinery to understand the place of value production of the media workers, as well as their specific place in the production chain of platform companies, to ascertain whether and how the work process of these professionals is datafied in its different specificities.

This paper investigates the mobility and migration experiences of Brazilian workers in the digital games industry, focusing on issues of digital labor and the political economy of the cultural and technological industries. The research answers questions about the circulation of these workers in the labor market and the relationship between migration and labor process in the games industry. Using industry reports and a literature review, the study is based on 14 semi-structured interviews conducted between October 2022 and August 2024 with key professionals in the production of digital games, such as programmers, artists, designers, and managers. The paper starts from the hypothesis that, in a global labor market, workers from peripheral countries, such as Brazil, have economic incentives to migrate and work for foreign companies, especially in the Global North, where the games industry is more developed. Through Labor Process Theory (LPT), the article: (1) demonstrates that these mobility experiences of these workers are marked by mobility/immobility dynamics, reflecting pronounced global inequalities; (2) exposes the various forms of mediation that facilitate the circulation of these workers in the labor market, including educational institutions, social networks and social media, and events; and (3) investigates the relevance of territory and spatial constraints to understanding the labor process, highlighting local production cultures, work organization, and unionization. The text establishes dialogues with studies of LPT and migration, contributing to the understanding of the relationships between migration and digital labor in the gaming industry.

NGOs and self-organized groups increasingly use (digital) data for documenting conflicts and human rights violations. This paper presents a study into emerging investigatory practices in the context of Russia’s war on Ukraine. On the basis of 12 semi-structured interviews in Ukraine this paper illustrates how the context of war enacts techniques for evidence production. A diverse set of actors and organizations collect and curate data for different ends, ranging from justice and accountability, finance, policy making and memorization. We illustrate how a hypothetical future (“if the war ends”) plays a defining role in how investigatory practices are being organized. Therefore we use the term: ‘hope labour’. Hope labour leads to technological, organizational and/or discursive innovation, yet, these innovations are precarious and unfinished.

Digital War Investigations can be told as a story of ‘the online’. Footage from the battlefield is distributed, streamed, and contested via social media. The availability of data has given an input to the rise of data publics that through (online) collaborative efforts work on development of verification methodologies. This paper takes a different approach by telling a story about the “information front”; on how people in Ukraine respond to the availability of data while being in the situation of war and also create data (archives). This implies taking into account local dynamics, precariousness, and cultural specificities. In our paper we show how professional identities are in flux, how new relations enact specific spaces or organizations and how a sense of past, present and future structures data practices.

The proposal presents partial results of ongoing research about prescriptions of domestic work platforms. Its main objective is to discuss the communication between digital care work platform companies and their workers, considering a comparative approach between organizations operating in Brazil and the USA.

Taking advantage of the historical social, gender, race, and class inequalities of both countries, these business organizations are expanding widely and intensively exploiting the care work of people and households carried out by millions of women.

In this context, platform companies mobilize different communication uses in support of their logic of management and organization of work. In the case of this proposal, a critical analysis will be presented on domestic work prescriptions identified in the discourses disseminated by digital platform companies in both countries.

Specifically, we will deal with the guidelines workers receive from companies to carry out their work. This study involves a theoretical-methodological path that includes bibliographic and documentary research based on Brazilian and North American data, whose results show similarities and differences in domestic work in the platform economy in different Global South and Global North territories.