Storytelling as connectivity

Expanding the Digital Geographies of the Gig Economy

Bibliographic Data

ID3977407
AuthorsNatasha A Webster (0000-0001-6289-2380, Örebro University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume26
Issue1
Pages1-19
Publication date2025-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2024.2367417
OpenAlexW4400211262
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited73

The last decade has seen unprecedented changes in working forms, not the least through technological innovation while leisure time is equally reshaped by platforms. Although relatively new, the gig economy – temporary work mediated through platforms – is increasingly an important form of employment globally and consequently, the gig economy is represented in popular culture. Popular culture is part of social-technical-spatial relations making these important spaces in digital geographies. However, digital content, for example from streaming programs, is often not considered in labour geography studies. By conducting ethnographic content analysis and doodling ‘think-with’ work on Beforeigners, a piece of speculative fiction from Norway, I explore how storytelling conjoins parallel digital practices. I show storytelling as a kind of softening of ground narrating technological-spatial relations and demonstrates how, from this Nordic example, storytelling is part of the continuative geographical ordering of work forms in digital spaces and places. Exploring other sites of digital spaces highlights the ways digital geography is multi-layered, inter-relational and gradient, and demonstrates the need to go beyond established sites of inquiry to understand the gig economy as a social-technological-spatial relation

Art · Digital economy · Digital Storytelling · Economic geography · Ethnography · Geography · Gig economy · Narrative · Precarity · Relation (database · Sociology · Storytelling · Work (physics · World Wide Web · Anthropology · Computer Science · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Engineering · Gender Studies · Sharing Economy and Platforms

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access