How do digital platforms govern their users? Existing studies, with their focus on impersonal and procedural modes of governance, have largely neglected to examine the human labor through which platform companies attempt to elicit the consent of their users. This study describes the relationship labor that is systematically excised from many platforms’ accounts of what they do and missing from much of the scholarship on platform governance. Relationship labor is carried out by agents of platform companies who engage in interpersonal communications with a platform’s users in an effort to align diverse users’ activities and preferences with the company’s interests. The authors draw on ethnographic research conducted at AllDone (a for-profit startup that built an online market for local services) and edX (a non-profit startup that partnered with institutions to offer Massive Open Online Courses). The findings leverage variation in organizational contexts to elaborate the common practices and divergent strategies of relationship labor deployed by each platform. Both platforms relied on relationship workers to engage in account management practices aimed at addressing the particular concerns of individual users through interpersonal communications. Relationship workers in each setting also engaged in community management practices that facilitated contact and collaboration among users in pursuit of shared goals. However, our findings show that the relative frequency of relationship workers’ use of account management and community management practices varies with organizational conditions. This difference in strategies also corresponded to different ways of valuing relationship workers and incorporating them into organizational processes. The article demonstrates how variation in organizational context accounts for divergent strategies for governing user participation in digital platforms and for the particular processes through which governance is accomplished and contested.

中文翻译：

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让平台发挥作用：关系劳动与公众管理

数字平台如何治理用户？现有的研究侧重于非个人化和程序化的治理模式，在很大程度上忽略了检查平台公司试图通过哪些人力来获得用户的同意。这项研究描述了从许多平台关于他们所做的事情的描述中系统地剔除的关系劳动，以及从许多平台治理学术研究中缺失的部分。关系劳动是由平台公司的代理人进行的，他们与平台用户进行人际沟通，努力使不同用户的活动和偏好与公司的利益保持一致。作者借鉴了在 AllDone（一家为本地服务建立在线市场的营利性初创公司）和 edX（一家与机构合作提供大规模开放在线课程的非营利性初创公司）进行的民族志研究。研究结果利用组织环境的变化来阐述每个平台部署的关系劳动的常见做法和不同策略。这两个平台都依赖关系工作者进行帐户管理实践，旨在通过人际交流解决个人用户的特殊问题。每个环境中的关系工作者还参与社区管理实践，以促进用户之间的联系和协作以实现共同目标。然而，我们的研究结果表明，关系工作者使用账户管理和社区管理实践的相对频率因组织条件而异。这种策略上的差异也对应于评估关系型员工并将其纳入组织流程的不同方式。本文展示了组织环境的变化如何解释管理用户参与数字平台的不同策略以及完成和竞争治理的特定流程。