Platform capitalism: actors and actants in the informational sector

Abstract

Recently, there have been profound transformations of informational work with the emergence and consolidation of work platforms in the form of companies, which insert the activity in a new stage of capitalism typical of the 21st century. In the light of the ontological and methodological contributions of the actor-network theory, this paper aims to theoretically reconstruct the displacements that occur in the information sector, focusing on the reconstruction of the assemblages that professionals and technologies establish. The analysis addresses in particular the figure of the prosumer, partially overlapped with the emirec, and its interactions with the professional work of amateur and professional communicators. Understood as associations that involve multiple actants, from algorithms to the Covid pandemic, the article contributes to consider the implications of non-human actors in the configuration of new publics, as well as the relationship between information and knowledge production in these work environments. Conclusions show that work usually considered as amateur, through its incorporation in the platforms and from the possibility of becoming temporary work, generates the blurring of the broadcasting professions.