Journal articles on the topic 'Platform for Labour Action (Uganda)'

This paper will give an introduction into the rise of crowdsourcing, its methods and the controversies surrounding it. To some, crowdsourcing is a neutral umbrella term that describes new processes of distributing labour; to others it is the exploitation of cheap or free labour with detrimental effects for workers and professions. The questions are: Is crowdsourcing exploitative even when all participants are volunteers and know the conditions? Is it labour when people do the work as a hobby? Is crowdsourcing inherently unethical or is it just a question of how the parameters are configured? And how can national labour laws tackle a global phenomenon? It is not easy to evaluate crowdsourcing because of its varying definitions and methods. The deal between those who do the work and thosewho profit from it varies from platform to platform. The different approaches in crowdsourcing are scattered across a spectrum that reaches from productive leisure and play over altruistic volunteering to precarious labour.

AbstractThe Fairwork Project is an international action-research project that currently operates in over 20 countries. The project focuses on working conditions in the platform economy, in order to develop ‘fairness ratings’ for digital labour platforms. With respect to Germany, the project evaluated the working conditions offered by ten digital labour platforms, by scoring them against the Fairwork principles and producing a national league table. We found that even in a highly regulated labour market context like the German one, platform workers experience precarity and insecurity and have limited access to employment rights. A number of platform workers are classified as employees rather than self-employed, and this guarantees a number of employment rights, including entitlement to minimum wage, health and safety protection and social protection. However, the existence of an employment relationship does not necessarily ensure platform work to be fair as other factors, including the existence of complex networks of subcontracting, erode labour standards and deprive workers of basic employment rights.Practical Relevance: While there are tens of millions of digital platform workers around the world performing functions essential to society—as demonstrated drastically by the Covid-19 pandemic—by supplying food, care and passenger transportation services, many platform workers face low pay, precarity as well as poor and dangerous working conditions. Exposing fracture lines of inequalities affecting particularly women, migrants and minority-ethnic groups who form the core part of the gig workforce, the international Fairwork research project aims not just to understand the gig economy, but to change it.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to shed light on the rising waves of workplace militancy in the public sector and to provide insights into the perceptions that frame justification for industrial action among Ugandan public sector employees.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews and documentary analysis, analysed qualitatively, as well as a review of theoretical and empirical literature.FindingsPublic school teachers and public university lecturers in Uganda who frequently engage in industrial action mainly rationalise their engagement by the absence, or the ineffectiveness of alternative conflict resolution mechanisms. The findings also show that industrial action, even in resource-constrained settings like Uganda, is stimulated more by the desire to achieve equity rather than by the basic desire to improve working conditions. It is also notable that new, often unstructured, forms of workplace militancy continue to emerge in the public sector, and waves of industrial action are shifting from the industrial to the public sector.Practical implicationsWhereas industrial action is a protected labour right, the findings of this research strongly suggest that public employees do not necessarily enjoy their right to engage, but only reluctantly take industrial action as a “last resort”. The findings will, therefore, help public managers and policymakers to appreciate their responsibility in reducing the compulsion for industrial action among public employees.Originality/valueThis paper provides a general explanation for industrial action from the perspective of the people involved, rather than explaining the causality of specific strike actions. At a time when industrial action is generally declining in the developed industrialised states, this paper sheds light on the rise in collective action in developing countries and especially in the public sector.

This article reflects on the vulnerability of the new digital platform workers regarding their social rights, a highly controversial issue at the doctrinal and jurisprudential levels. Firstly, we analyse the greater job instability and lack of protection experienced by the workers in this type of platforms, and the labour legal framework that derives from these new business models. In this sense, the current doctrine can be grouped into two positions: a first one which defends that these workers should be considered employees and, therefore, remain under the umbrella of the general labour legislation; and a second one, that proposes a legal transformation to include these special workers. Secondly, we analyse the effects derived from the growing development of the platform economy for the Spanish Social Security system. This analysis focuses both on the effects of the protective action of the welfare state for their workers, as well as on its impact on the financing of the public pension system. The article draws a series of final conclusions warning about the possible crash of the fundamental social rights of platform workers.

AbstractThe USAID-funded flagship family planning service delivery project named Evidence to Action (E2A) worked from 2011 to 2021 to improve family planning and reproductive health for women and girls across seventeen nations in sub-Saharan Africa using a “scaling-up mindset.” The paper discusses three key lessons emerging from the project’s experience with applying ExpandNet’s systematic approach to scale up. The methodology uses ExpandNet/WHO’s scaling-up framework and guidance tools to design and implement pilot or demonstration projects in ways that look ahead to their future scale-up; develop a scaling-up strategy with local stakeholders; and then strategically manage the scaling-up process. The paper describes how a scaling-up mindset was engendered, first within the project’s technical team in Washington and then how they subsequently sought to build capacity at the country level to support scale-up work throughout E2A’s portfolio of activities. The project worked with local multi-stakeholder resource teams, often led by government officials, to equip them to lead the scale-up of family planning and health system strengthening interventions. Examples from project experience in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda illustrating key concepts are discussed. E2A also established a community of practice on systematic approaches to scale up as a platform for sharing learning across a variety of technical agencies engaged in scale-up work and to create learning opportunities for interacting with thought leaders around critical scale-up issues.

In his 1872 The housing question, Friedrich Engels addressed the housing problems faced by the proletarian migrant workers in major industrial centres. He asserted that they could only be solved by first resolving their harsh working conditions in the capitalist mode of mass production. Presently, with transnational migrant flows to urban centres and the mass acceptance of the digital platform economy, the housing question manifests itself, among other expressions, in the case of immigrants working in this digital contract-based market. While the platform economy provides immigrants with quick access into a host country’s labour market, the income insecurity and high risks associated with such work put them in a state of precariousness. Through the framework of Engels’ proposed action lines and analysis of observations and interviews with immigrant riders working for the food delivery platforms Glovo and Deliveroo, the paper highlights the negative impacts that this contemporary capitalist model of work, the municipal housing plan and the ongoing Covid-19 crisis have on the immigrant riders’ residential and working conditions in Barcelona, Spain, a city facing a severe rental housing shortage. Lastly, it suggests that, while the social market economy in Spain can be reformed to ameliorate the negative impacts of the platform economy on immigrant riders, bridging the gap between immigrant housing provision and employment inclusion would need to consider decent labour and housing as rights for residents, immigrants included, asserting the currency of Engels’ ideas.

This article studies a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm based on agent action prediction. In multi-agent system, the action of learning agent selection is inevitably affected by the action of other agents, so the reinforcement learning system needs to consider the joint state and joint action of multi-agent based on this. In addition, the application of this method in the cooperative strategy learning of soccer robot is studied, so that the multi-agent system can pass through the environment. To realize the division of labour and cooperation of multi-robots, the interactive learning is used to master the behaviour strategy. Combined with the characteristics of decision-making of soccer robot, this article analyses the role transformation and experience sharing of multi-agent reinforcement learning, and applies it to the local attack strategy of soccer robot, uses this algorithm to learn the action selection strategy of the main robot in the team, and uses Matlab platform for simulation verification. The experimental results prove the effectiveness of the research method, and the superiority of the proposed method is validated compared with some simple methods.

In light of the individualisation, dispersal and pervasive monitoring that characterise work in the ‘gig economy’, the development of solidarity among gig workers could be expected to be unlikely. However, numerous recent episodes of gig workers’ mobilisation require reconsideration of these assumptions. This article contributes to the debate about potentials and obstacles for solidarity in the changing world of work by showing the processes through which workplace solidarity among gig workers developed in two cases of mobilisation of food delivery platform couriers in the UK and Italy. Through the framework of labour process theory, the article identifies the sources of antagonism in the app-mediated model of work organisation and the factors that facilitated and hindered the consolidation of active solidarity and the emergence of collective action among gig workers. The article emphasises the centrality of workers’ agential practices in overcoming constraints to solidarity and collective action, and the diversity of forms through which solidarity can be expressed in hostile work contexts.

Abstract Twitch is a complex space that involves both laborious play and “playbour” through the commodification of streamers time and the gamification of streamer interaction through emotes and bits. As a result, this creates a rhetorical space where celebrity, race, and gender are tension points that reflect disproportionate power structures on Twitch. Coupled with the fact that Twitch also functions as the main broadcast platform for esports tournaments, understanding how streamers rhetorically position themselves and interact with audiences as content creators, streamers, celebrities, and, for some, esports athletes it is important as video games increasingly become a mainstream form of entertainment. In addition to examining streamers, we also need to understand how average audiences, both casual, non-competitive gamers, and mainstream audiences will consume and react to streamer discussions and discourse and how that impacts attitudes in the community, particularly in relation to toxicity towards minorities. My paper uses Tyler “Ninja” Belvin’s statement “I don’t play with female gamers” (Frank 2018) as a rhetorical case study for examining rhetorical power, celebrity, and privilege on Twitch. I ultimately argue that Twitch is a site of laborious play and “playbour” that perpetually remains socially inactive in supporting and accepting minorities on the platform. To support this argument, I use Carolyn Miller’s “Genre as Social Action” (1984) to situate the rhetorics around this situation using her features (context, recursive patterns, discourse, mediation, and exigence) to analyse two interviews with Ninja, labour and commodification structures on Twitch, and Twitch chat. Through these, I identify the rhetorical implications of Ninja’s statements, how it affects the Twitch gaming community, and reveal a complex power structure that ultimately fails to acknowledge the streamers’ rhetorical power and influence while continuing to perpetuate toxic gaming attitudes towards minorities.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report a study of bullying on online labour markets (OLMs), highlighting how abuse unfolds in digital workplaces and depicting the trajectory of target resilience. Design/methodology/approach Adopting van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology, targets’ lived experiences of bullying on OLMs was explored. Data gathered from Indian freelancers located on Upwork via conversational telephonic interviews were subjected to sententious and selective thematic analyses. Findings The core theme of “pursuing long-term and holistic well-being” showed how targets tapped into yet augmented their resilience while navigating the features of OLMs as they coped with their experiences of bullying. The interface between targets’ internal and external resources, including platform support, vis-à-vis the concreteness and permanence of the site as targets asserted agency, sought control and realized positive outcomes while preserving their reputation, relationality, success and continuity was captured. It may be noted that bullying in digital workplaces is exclusively virtual in form. Research limitations/implications Alongside theoretical generalizability, statistical generalizability of the findings should be established. Practical implications Recommendations for action for platforms and targets are forwarded. In particular, the critical role of formal workplace support in influencing employee resilience is emphasized. Originality/value The paper makes several pioneering contributions. First, it reports the first empirical inquiry examining bullying in digital workplaces. Moreover, OLM research on abuse and harassment has not been undertaken so far. Second, it furthers theorization of resilience, especially with regard to workplace antecedents. Apart from identifying the new organizational antecedent of formal workplace support, it uncovers the complexities of resilience. Third, it extends knowledge on workplace cyberbullying, positive outcomes of workplace bullying and OLMs in India.

The emergence of COVID-19 highlights globalisation realties, where diseases may emerge from anywhere and rapidly spread globally. Lessons emphasise the necessity for strengthening regional and global collaboration and coordination to allow rapid risk identification, resource mobilisation and joint actions. We report the experience of the Regional Action through Data (RAD) partnership in fostering regional cooperation and collaboration to use data for battling infectious diseases and the effects of COVID-19. The Partnership comprised;BoadReach company, The West African Health Organization (WAHO) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD); Duke University Global Health Centre and the Jembi Health Systems, South Africa. Main objective: To address the problem of limited used of data to drive performance in healthcare service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa; by changing how and why data is collected, analysed, and then used to achieve results. Specific objectives: 1. Regional level: To equip and empower IGAD and WAHO with evidence-based analytics to drive data use for evidence-based policy and program action in public health (regional level). 2. Patient -provider level: To deploy and implement a digital health solution for child-hood vaccination services focused on mobile cross-border populations along the Uganda-Kenya border. Engagement approaches used included; meetings, workshops, technical working groups, establishing monitoring system and annual implementation revision. Targeted training and capacity building were conducted. All activities were built on existing systems and structures to strengthen ownership and sustainability. Regional level achievements: 1. Regional health data sharing and protection policy, 2. Strengthened regional health information platform. Patient provider level: Deployment of a cloud based digital health solution to enhance childhood access to vaccination services for cross border populations of Kenya and Uganda, 3. Both regions developed resource mobilisation plans for sustainability. RAD established the foundation for building trust and strengthening regional collaboration and coordination in health in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This study provides insights into digitalization in sustainable supply chain management by establishing a structural set of attributes with causal interrelationships among them, as well as by reporting empirical findings on successful criteria for footwear supply chain practices in Indonesia. Sustainable supply chain management and digitalization are mutual benefits. However, there are unclear cause and effect interrelationships. This study aims to critically pinpoint digitalization to approach sustainability and is designed to help firms achieve supply chain competitiveness. The fuzzy Delphi method and fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory are utilized, due to the fuzziness associated with human decision making and the complexity and uncertainty in the supply chain. Five aspects and seventeen criteria are validated. The findings indicate that four aspects, including digital platform effectiveness, digital communication belonging to the supply chain digitalization perspective, labour conditions, and manufacturing processes, are important to sustainable supply chain management. The top causal criteria, including logistics integration, logistics optimization, delivery speed, proactive action, and real-time inventory, are considered to assist firms in implementing better practices.

Self-employed media and cultural workers are key users of co-working spaces, where a growing number of independent workers share desks and office amenities, escape the isolation of working from home and seek contacts for paid work. Informed by interviews with coworking space operators and members, this article assesses coworking as a response to precarity. We argue that social and political ambivalence is intrinsic to the culture of coworking. First, we situate coworking in a political–economic context, claiming that coworking emerged as a worker-developed response to changing economic conditions but, in its current form, is increasingly commodified and ultimately reinforces labour flexibilization. Second, we survey meanings attached to coworking, highlighting tensions between coworking’s counter-corporate identity and its recapitulation of neoliberal norms. Third, we address subjectivity formation, proposing that coworking spaces are a stage for the performance of network sociality. We conclude by considering coworking’s political potential as a platform for collective action. This article forms part of the Special Issue ‘On the Move’, which marks the twentieth anniversary of European Journal of Cultural Studies.

The development of local communities, the future of the Republic of Poland is a matter requiring the integration of hands, hearts and minds, a sense of rights and obligations of all citizens. With this awareness and the need for action to rebuild ties in local communities, the General Meeting of the Beskidy Association of Ecological Production and Tourism BEST PROEKO in 2014 adopted a resolution on statutory actions to counteract the spreading social pathology and social exclusion of the unemployed and disadvantaged people, which resulted in the creation of the first Social Integration Centre in the district of Żywiec in Jeleśnia. It is a coherent, integrated and coherent measure that fits into the Development Strategy of the Silesian Voivodeship "Śląskie 2020+" in the area of social economy and fulfils the mission to create a necessary platform for cooperation for local partnership in order to improve the quality of life of persons in need of comprehensive support on the way to return to decent living and to social and professional activity. The Beskidzki Congress of Social Economy had the task of bottom-up evaluation of the activity of social economy entities of the Polish Social Economy and analysis of conditions and needs in terms of legal and organizational changes to improve their functioning in a coherent and integrated local partnership in the space of socio-economic life of the inhabitants of the Podbeskidzie region.

Transforming the current food system into one which delivers healthy, sustainable diets will require some form of governance. Due to the complex nature of the food system, multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs), which bring together actors from multiple sectors into a shared space for joint decision making, have been proposed as one potential governance structure. Using the Food Change Lab, a multi-stakeholder platform led by a local civil society organization in Fort Portal, Uganda, as a case study, this paper uses an explicit conceptual framework for food system governance to understand how such an MSP can support improved food system outcomes. Local-level, civil-society-led MSPs have a limited ability to support a system-based problem framing, due to a tension between a holistic view of the system and identifying concrete entry points for action. They can support boundary spanning by creating horizontal linkages but are less effective in creating vertical linkages due to their locally embedded nature. Because such MSPs are not dependent on formal policy processes, they can be very adaptable and flexible in prioritizing issues and focus areas. The greatest influence of such MSPs in food governance is in supporting inclusiveness, especially of marginalized voices. While such MSPs are unlikely to be able to achieve food system transformation alone, they do play a key role in engaging with marginalized groups, supporting inclusion of local issues and promoting alternative food system visions.

Ryerson University’s Prior Learning and Competency Evaluation and Documentation (PLACED) program is funded by the Government of Ontario to engage internationally educated professionals (IEPs), employers, and regulatory/occupational bodies in the use of competency-based practices. In 2008, the authors created a self-assessment tool for IEPs that would build a portfolio reflecting an individual’s knowledge and skills while introducing him or her to aspects of the Canadian workplace and labour market. The authors felt that this tool would be useful to assist IEPs in considering their career options and wanted to create an online workshop that would provide flexibility to users whose priorities were most likely work and family obligations. This short project description will capture a) why the self-assessment tool was developed; (b) how we fostered participants’ self-efficacy; c) how we used Blackboard; (d) what the participants gained from the workshop; and (e) how the workshop has evolved based on facilitators’ observations, participants’ feedback, and an external organization’s request for customizing the workshop. In working together to design the online workshop, <em>IEPs’ Self-Assessment and Planning,</em> we focused on two main concepts: self-assessment and career planning. With that in mind, we set out in the workshop to bolster self-discovery, self-efficacy, individualized research skills, action planning, and ongoing professional development. The learning platform was Blackboard, which is used across Ryerson University in both classroom and online learning.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is about understanding an existing situation in a South Indian village and developing a strategy to produce and market speciality hand knitting yarn, involving the unpaid labour (women) in the handloom industry. An observation method (field study) is used to identify an appropriate method for the design and development of speciality yarns. Design/methodology/approach Participatory action research is a recursive process that identifies methods leading to the choice of appropriate technology (AT) for the production of speciality yarn. A field study observation method was carried out to identify an AT that is acceptable for the community considering their socio-cultural background of the society. Once the technology (AT) was identified to design the speciality yarn, the research then tests the quality and marketability of the yarn. Findings The method used for product design and quality testing can be adapted by researchers and designers to develop craft items that can build a platform to start a small-scale business. The research describes a model/framework that could be used/investigated by other bodies in the future. Research limitations/implications The limitation of AT and the approach taken for research cannot be clearly identified without testing the production method with the women in the village. Originality/value This research confirms that along with identifying a sustainable method of production for speciality yarn, it is very essential to ensure the quality of the product that can compete with other market-available hand knitting yarns.

This paper reports and reflects on studies about the problems encountered in the implementation of education policies in several contexts in developed and developing countries. In these studies special attention is paid to the problems of the youth at risk between education and the labour market. In developing countries policies are in general framed by international policy initiatives such as those formulated in the Education for All Millennium Goals. However, in many cases there is an overproduction of such policies and extreme underperformance in the implementation. Obstacles are, for instance, problems concerning policy standards and their implementation; discontinuities between the national, provincial and district levels; lack of funding and at the same time corruption; lack of contextualisation; and, most prominently, lack of participation at grassroots level. In the case of the youth in sub-Saharan Africa, despite more access to education, poor implementation leads to problems such as high drop-out rates, low quality of education and too little attention paid to skills development. The existing dysfunctionality of the education system and the growing skills gap between what the youth can offer and what the labour market requires (especially in countries such as Uganda with a fast population growth) lead to a growing divide between the learning rich (minority) and the learning poor (majority). People are experiencing an alarming decrease in social cohesion. In many European countries the legitimacy of the welfare state is increasingly coming under pressure due to the recent economic crisis. The willingness to provide the tools for achieving an inclusive society is no longer self-evident. Here as well, the question is which policies respond to the demands of the labour market and at the same time avoid marginalisation of the unemployed, disabled, ethnic minorities and disadvantaged people – in other words, how to achieve, in this period of economic crisis, the goal of continuously creating equal opportunities and equal access to services for all citizens. In the past the educational policy strategies of many governments privileged technocratic efficiency over grassroots participation in decision making, such that the existing power patterns were reinforced. To break with this technocratic hindrance, bot-top-down approaches seem to be needed in policy development to improve the quality of implementation. This means that while honouring the central role the government or departments of education (the top) should play in policy development and implementation, policies must be founded on solid needs analysis (bottom) so that it is possible to address problems on the ground (down). This supports the relevance of participatory approaches, which help by identifying a range of complex economic and social issues at grassroots level, by empowering communities to identify problems, through the development of plans for comprehensive and long-term solutions and, finally, by taking action. Important partners could be universities, policy makers, practitioners, companies and civil society. These types of (public-private) partnerships could be further developed into learning partnerships to facilitate working on bot-top-down strategies and capacity building of practitioners in the educational field. To have policies that are grounded in relevant issues and to develop strategies that are intended to address those issues is one step in the right direction towards effective implementation.

This research empirically investigated the nexus between gender diversity (and gender intelligence) and company productivity among one hundred companies that were purposely selected in Harare in Zimbabwe. While the literature analysis views the labour force as comprising a sheer team of male and female employees, the recent researches proved that gender balanced corporate boards and employees have a positive bearing on the performance, development and productivity of the companies. Gender diversity in production team members has potential to encourage more innovation, collective intelligence, different skills-sets and emotional perspectives to decision-making, compared to gender imbalanced production team members. A culture of inclusiveness creates a conducive environment for a company to be able to attract and retain the best employees and manufacture more germane products that suit expectations of an evolving and more profitable market place. At the same time women entering the production industry face a number of social and cultural factors that in the long run would shape the challenges that they experience including discrimination, poverty and limited access to financial loans. These challenges are costly to production and the benefits of closing such gaps are important to industrial productivity. Both the Beijing Platform for Action and the Sustainable Development Goals argue that providing women and girls with equal access to decent work and representation in political and economic decision-making processes would fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large. The research undertakes key informant interviews with company executives to assess levels of access to finance and business related opportunities in sole male companies, sole female companies and the diversified gender companies; administers questionnaires to the company’s executives to gauge performance of male and female workers and holds three focus group discussions to assess views and register attitudes of employees. The research concluded that gender diversity and company productivity are related.

The purpose of this study attempted to explore intentions of frontline employees on language learning in Macau hospitality industry. Without exploring learners’ intention, the successful language learning cannot be achieved. Various factors promote or hinder language learners from the implementation of behaviour, that is learning a language. As Macau is one of famous tourist destinations, diversifying single economic development on gaming industry has been enforced. Acting the platform between China and Lusophony countries has also been initiated. Developing language competence in hospitality industry becomes essential in Macau. Hence, this study is crucial for language teaching and learning contexts in hospitality industry while it is anticipated that more and more international tourists will be received in Macau soon after recovering from COVID-19. In this study, the theory of planed behaviour suggested by Ajzen (1991) [1] was applied to explore language learners’ behavioural intentions in terms of learning either English or Portuguese. After a pilot study, the main study was conducted in November 2019. The research findings showed attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control had positive and significant impacts on language learning intention. Specifically, subjective norm was the most influential factor affecting learners’ behavioural intention, followed by perceived behavioural control and then attitude. Significant others therefore played the key factor on influencing learners to take an action on learning languages in the society of Macau. This finding may result from job requirements in the labour-market. Finally, the study contributes to educational literature by demonstrating the importance of intentions on frontline employees’ language learning by applying the theory of planned behaviour. Practically, based on the aspect of social psychology to scrutinise learners’ behavioural intention, it would allow language educators adopting effective teaching and learning approach to satisfy learners’ needs.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the training of college librarians, academic and management staff, IT managers and students on how to organise, manage and use a user-friendly library. In Uganda, as in many countries, the problem is that school and/or college libraries are managed by librarians who may have good cataloguing and management skills, but who do not have the pedagogic skills and knowledge of the school curricula that are necessary for librarians to be able to guide and mentor both teachers and students or organise curriculum-related activities or facilitate research. The development of user-friendly libraries contributes in improving education quality through nurturing the interest of students and teachers in literacy activities and active search for knowledge. Under the stewardship of the Belgium Technical Cooperation and the Ministry of Education in Uganda, library stakeholders were trained on how to put users – rather than themselves – in the centre of the library’s operations and introduced to active teaching and learning methodologies and activities with emphasis on getting engaged in transforming spaces, services, outreach to users and collections. Several measures, short and long term were taken to address the gaps limiting the performance of the librarians. Given the disparities in the trainees’ education level and work experience, the training was delivered in seven modules divided into three units for over eight months in 2015. By the end of the training, trainees developed unique library strategic plan, library policies and procedures, capacity to use library systems, physical design and maintenance systems, partnerships, library structure and staff job descriptions. Design/methodology/approach To effectively engage the participants each topic was conducted using active teaching and learning (ATL) methodologies, including: lecture with slides and hands-on practice – each topic was introduced in a lecture form with slides and hands-on exercises. The main goal was to introduce the participants to the concepts discussed, offer opportunities to explore alternative approaches, as well define boundaries for discussion through brainstorming. The question-answer approach kept the participants alert and to start thinking critically on the topic discussed – brainstorming sessions allowed thinking beyond the presentation room, drawing from personal experiences to provide alternatives to anticipated challenges. The goal here was for the participants to provide individual choices and approaches for real life problems; group discussions: case study/ scenario and participant presentations – participants were provided with a scenario and asked to provide alternative approaches that could solve the problem based on their personal experience at their colleges. By the end of the group discussion, participants presented a draft of the deliverable as per the topic under discussion. More so, group discussions were an excellent approach to test participant’s teamwork skills and ability to compromise, as well as respecting team decisions. It was an opportunity to see how librarians will work with the library committees. Group discussions further initiated and cemented the much-needed librarian–academic staff – college management relationship. During the group discussion, librarians, teaching staff, ICT staff and college management staff, specifically the Principals and Deputy Principals interacted freely thus starting and cultivating a new era of work relationship between them. Individual presentation: prior to the workshop, participants were sent instructions to prepare a presentation on a topic. For example, participants were asked to provide their views of what a “user-friendly library” would look like or what would constitute a “user-friendly library”; the college library of HTC-Mulago was asked to talk about their experience working with book reserves, challenges faced and plans they have to address the challenges, while the college librarian from NTC-Kaliro was asked to describe a situation where they were able to assist a patron, the limitations they faced and how they addressed them. Doing so did not only assist to emotionally prepare the participants for the training but also helped to make them start thinking about the training in relation to their libraries and work. Take-home assignment: at the end of each session, participants were given home assignments to not only revise the training material but also prepare for the next day training. Further the take-home assignments provided time for the participants to discuss with their colleagues outside of the training room so as to have a common ground/ understanding on some of the very sensitive issues. Most interesting assignment was when participants were asked to review an article and to make a presentation in relation to their library experiences. Participant reports: participant reports resulted from the take-home assignments and participants were asked to make submission on a given topic. For example, participants were asked to review IFLA section on library management and write a two-page report on how such information provided supported their own work, as well as a participant report came from their own observation after a library visit. Invited talks with library expert: two invited talks by library experts from Consortium of Uganda University Libraries and Uganda Library and Information Science Association with the goal to share their experience, motivate the participants to strive higher and achieve great things for their libraries. Library visitation: there were two library visits conducted on three separate days – International Hospital Kampala (IHK) Library, Makerere University Library and Aga Khan University Hospital Library. Each of these library visits provided unique opportunities for the participants to explore best practices and implement similar practices in their libraries. Visual aids – videos, building plans and still photos: these were visual learning aids to supplement text during the lectures because they carried lot of information while initiating different thoughts best on the participants’ past experience and expertise. The training advocated for the use of ATL methodologies and likewise similar methodologies were used to encourage participants do so in their classrooms. Findings Addressing Key Concerns: Several measures, both long and short term, were taken to address the gaps limiting the performance of the librarians. The measures taken included: selected representative sample of participants including all college stakeholders as discussed above; active teaching and learning methodologies applied in the training and blended in the content of the training materials; initiated and formulated approaches to collaborations, networks and partnerships; visited different libraries to benchmark library practices and encourage future job shadowing opportunities; and encouraged participants to relate freely, understand and value each other’s work to change their mindsets. College librarians were encouraged to ensure library priorities remain on the agenda through advocacy campaigns. Short-term measures: The UFL training was designed as a practical and hands-on training blended with individual and group tasks, discussions, take-home assignments and presentations by participants. This allowed participates to engage with the material and take responsibility for their own work. Further, the training material was prepared with a view that librarians support the academic life of teaching staff and students. Participants were tasked to develop and later fine-tune materials designed to support their work. For example, developing a subject bibliography and posting it on the library website designed using open source tools such as Google website, Wikis, blogs. The developed library manual includes user-friendly policies and procedures referred to as “dos and don’ts in the library” that promote equitable open access to information; drafting book selection memos; new book arrivals lists; subscribing to open access journals; current awareness services and selective dissemination of information service displays and electronic bulletins. Based on their library needs and semester calendar, participants developed action points and timelines to implement tasks in their libraries at the end of each unit training. Librarians were encouraged to share their experiences through library websites, Facebook page, group e-mail/listserv and Instagram; however, they were challenged with intimate internet access. College libraries were rewarded for their extraordinary job. Given their pivotal role in the management and administration of financial and material resources, on top of librarians, the participants in this training were college administrators/ management, teaching and ICT staff, researchers and student leadership. Participants were selected to address the current and future needs of the college library. These are individuals that are perceived to have a great impact towards furthering the college library agenda. The practical nature of this training warranted conducting the workshops from developed but similar library spaces, for example, Aga Khan University Library and Kampala Capital City, Makerere University Library, International Hospital Kampala Library and Uganda Christian University Library. Participants observed orientation sessions, reference desk management and interviews, collection management practices, preservation and conservation, secretarial bureau management, etc. Long-term measures: Changing the mindset of librarians, college administrators and teaching staff is a long-term commitment which continues to demand for innovative interventions. For example: job shadowing allowed college librarian short-term attachments to Makerere University Library, Uganda Christian University Library, Aga Khan Hospital University Library and International Hospital Kampala Library – these libraries were selected because of their comparable practices and size. The mentorship programme lasted between two-three weeks; on-spot supervision and follow-up visits to assess progress with the action plan by the librarians and college administration and college library committee; ensuring that all library documents – library strategic plan, library manual, library organogram, etc are approved by the College Governing Council and are part of the college wide governing documents; and establishing the library committee with a job description for each member – this has strengthened the library most especially as an advocacy tool, planning and budgeting mechanism, awareness channel for library practices, while bringing the library to the agenda – reemphasizing the library’s agenda. To bridge the widened gap between librarians and the rest of the stakeholders, i.e. teaching staff, ICT staff, college administration and students, a college library committee structure and its mandate were established comprising: Library Committee Chairperson – member of the teaching staff; Library Committee Secretary – College Librarian; Student Representative – must be a member of the student Guild with library work experience; and Representative from each college academic department. A library consortium was formed involving all the four project supported colleges to participate in resource sharing practices, shared work practices like shared cataloguing, information literacy training, reference interview and referral services as well a platform for sharing experiences. A library consortium further demanded for automating library functions to facilitate collaboration and shared work. Plans are in place to install Koha integrated library system that will cultivate a strong working relationship between librarians and students, academic staff, college administration and IT managers. This was achieved by ensuring that librarians innovatively implement library practices and skills acquired from the workshop as well as show their relevance to the academic life of the academic staff. Cultivating relationships takes a great deal of time, thus college librarians were coached on: creating inclusive library committees, timely response to user needs, design library programmes that address user needs, keeping with changing technology to suite changing user needs, seeking customer feedback and collecting user statistics to support their requests, strengthening the library’s financial based by starting a secretarial bureau and conducting user surveys to understand users’ information-seeking behaviour. To improve the awareness of new developments in the library world, college librarians were introduced to library networks at national, regional and international levels, as a result they participated in conferences, workshops, seminars at local, regional and international level. For example, for the first time and with funding from Belgium Technical Cooperation, college librarians attended 81st IFLA World Library and Information Congress in South African in 2015. College libraries are now members of the Consortium of Uganda University Libraries and Uganda Library and Information Science Association and have attended meetings of these two very important library organisations in Uganda’s LIS profession. The college librarians have attended meetings and workshops organized by these two organisations. Originality/value At the end of the three units training, participants were able to develop: a strategic plan for their libraries; an organogram with staffing needs and job description matching staff functions; a Library Committee for each library and with a structure unifying all the four project-support Colleges; a library action plan with due dates including deliverables and responsibilities for implementation; workflow plan and organisation of key sections of the library such as reserved and public spaces; furniture and equipment inventory (assets); a library manual and collection development policy; partnerships with KCCA Library and Consortium of Uganda University Libraries; skills to use Koha ILMS for performing library functions including: cataloguing, circulation, acquisitions, serials management, reporting and statistics; skills in searching library databases and information literacy skills; skills in designing simple and intuitive websites using Google Sites tools; and improved working relationship between the stakeholders was visible. To further the user-friendly libraries principle of putting users in the centre of the library’s operations, support ATL methodologies and activities with emphasis on getting engaged in transforming spaces, services, outreach to users and collections the following initiatives are currently implemented in the colleges: getting approval of all library policy documents by College Governing Council, initiating job shadowing opportunities, conducting on-spot supervision, guide libraries to set up college library committees and their job description, design library websites, develop dissemination sessions for all library policies, incorporate user-friendly language in all library documents, initiate income generation activities for libraries, set terms of reference for library staff and staffing as per college organogram, procurement of library tools like DDC and library of congress subject headings (LCSH), encourage attendance to webinars and space planning for the new libraries.

The exile years of Janusz Jędrzejewicz (1939-1951), a prominent and reputed educator of the inter-war Poland, deserve much of our attention. After the outbreak of the war, Jędrzejewicz initially took some effort to return to active military duty but these attempts failed to be successful. Along with the evacuation of the government, the Jędrzejewiczs had to leave Poland for Romania and had to remain there as exiles. Dull, everyday routine in exile in Romania was interspersed with Jędrzejewicz’s involvement in teaching maths and in meetings with fellow exiles, the followers of Józef Piłsudzki. The years from July 1940 until the end of the year, Jędrzejewicz and his family spent in Turkey. In the dire straits he was in at the time, to minimize stress and inconvenience in housing, he managed to find some balance and relief in his political and social activity. Jędrzejewicz managed to establish contacts with other exiles, notably Tatar, Caucasian and Ukrainian exiles. As a result of the meetings with the non-Polish émigrés, the concept of the so-called “Międzymorze – Intermarum”, a proposed federation of countries stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, emerged. The years between 1940 and 1942 Jędzerzejowicz and his family spent in Tel-Aviv in Palestine. The local Polish political and military circles were closely associated with former “colonels” and Gen. Sławoj-Składkowski’s supporters and were labelled as “steadfast” or “unyielding”. In a straightforward way, the leadership of this group fell to Jędrzejewicz as the one who was the highest ranking Pilsudski-ite among them. The group became the core of the political movement founded upon a concept that underlined the ideas of the late marshal and represented their supporters in the Near East. Jędrzejewicz was very active in writing articles on social and political subjects and in giving lectures, including notably the one delivered on March 19, 1941 and entitled “On the occasion of the anniversary of the name day of First Marshal of Poland” He was also involved in talks with leaders of local Jewish and Arabic population. The presented concept of “Intermarum” was received with interest by politicians in exile from the Baltics, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. It also formed an alternative to the realpolitik exercised by the government in exile.An important initiative of the group of the Pilsudski-ites was to publish Biuletyn Informacyjny (News Bulletin), and then to transform it into the official monthly Na Straży (On guard). The editor-in-chief of the periodical was Jędrzejewicz himself (from issue 18th onwards). In the course of time, still in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, the Piłsudski-ite groups grew more and more members. These circles, physically far from the government in exile in London and its influence, were thus more independent and formed a sort of a mutation and an alternative to the London-based Związek Pracy Państwowej (State Labour Union). Under the leadership of Janusz Jędrzejewicz, the Piłsudzki-ites in Palestine organized themselves in Związek Pracy dla Państwa (Union of Work for the State). The Polish political scene in exile was going through many dramatic changes and transformations. Political tension was aggravated further by Prof. Kot’s action who had returned from the Soviet Union in mid-1942. He perceived the activity of some of Polish exiles in the Near East as politically detrimental and anti-government. As for Prof Kot’s intense dislike for Jędrzejewicz, it was guided by the two following reasons: the latter’s influence in circles overtly reluctant to accept the stance adopted by the government represented by Gen. Sikorski, and, secondly, his personal grudge and resentment towards the former minister of religious affairs and education (Polish: MriOP). The political situation of the years 1944-1946 was decisive in creating the atmosphere less negative and more cooperative, and ultimately led to the emergence of the idea of a common platform for reconciliation and understanding for all splinter groups of Piłsudski followers. The common denominator for all was to be the Independence League, a political party in exile, of which, until 1947, Jędrzejewicz knew very little about. From 1942 the Jędrzejewiczs lived in Jerusalem, where they enjoyed good rapport and relations with local Arab leaders. Despite some health problems, Jędrzejewicz engaged himself in a series of lectures and continued to edit the periodical Na Straży. Soon, however, he was forced to step down this post due to aggravating health problems. Towards the end of 1946, the former prime minister was transferred to the reserve. This helped Jędrzejewicz to obtain a decision to be moved to Great Britain. Before he left Jerusalem, however, he spent half a year with his family in harsh conditions of El Kantara field hospital, which was also a transit camp for war refugees. The circles of the London-based Pilsudski-ites were very much counting on Jędrzejewicz’s Związek Pracy dla Państwa. The promoters of the Independence League also viewed the former prime minister, who was a one-time trustworthy aide to Marshal Piłsudski, as their potential leader. Jędrzejewicz himself was quite aware of his assets and the position he enjoyed within the hierarchy of values as a Piłsudski-ite and, despite bad health, was ready to support the League. In the first half of 1948, with the help of Jędrzejewicz, the fundamentals of the political program of the Poland’s Independence League were established. However, the following infightings and quarrels as to who was to head the League made Jędrzejewicz step down from the position of the leader of the League. From that time on, his activity was limited to writing articles and the participation in the work for the board of trustees of the London Piłsudski Institute. Jędrzejewicz’s last years of his life were undoubtedly influenced by his poor health (1948-1951). He was repeatedly hospitalized, which was taken advantage of by his political opponents in 1948. His physical state was very much influenced by his mental condition, which was a result the victimization and persecution he experienced between 1939-1943. An emotional shock for him was undoubtedly the news about his son who had been shot by the Germans in 1943, and the death of his former wife, Maria Stattler, in 1944. Eventually, all his energy was directed at administrative and research work. With his participation, or at his initiative, four research institutes were established at the time. The intention was to conduct historical or political science research there. Janusz Jędrzejewicz died on March 16th 1951. In exile, he was unfortunate enough to experience ostracism from fellow Poles, both as a politician and as a man. Still, he was far from shunning the world and, with dignity, he carried out his mission of executing the tasks once set by his Commander. As an exile, he was just as well a good representative of a Piłsudski-ite with a characteristic appropriate system of values that determined his life style. The ongoing internalization of the imponderables of his beloved Commander was though respected in the multi-faceted realities of Polish exile life.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a severe public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with harmful effects on the physical, psychological, and socioeconomic wellbeing of survivors and their families. In SSA, IPV is associated with mental health disorders, high-risk behaviors, and HIV vulnerability, especially among women. In Uganda, poor socioeconomic status increases women’s vulnerability to IPV. Yet there is limited evidence on the association between socioeconomic factors and IPV severity in Uganda. Our study used population-based data to (a) establish different patterns describing the severity of IPV experiences, (b) explore associations between socioeconomic factors and severity of IPV experiences among Ugandan ever-married women, and (c) examine direct and indirect pathways from socioeconomic factors to severity of IPV experiences. Data were drawn from the 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey’s sample of 7,536 ever-married women aged 15–49 years. A latent class analysis examined distinct patterns of IPV severity among this sample, yielding a four-class solution: low violence ( n = 5,059; 67.1%); high physical violence, low sexual violence ( n = 1,501; 19.9%); high sexual violence, moderate physical violence ( n = 535; 7.1%); and high sexual and severe physical violence ( n = 441; 5.9%). Using the low violence group as the reference category, we conducted a multinomial logistic regression that found significant associations between secondary education (a OR 2.35, 95% CI: [1.06, 5.24]), poorest on the wealth index (a OR 2.00, 95% CI: [1.13, 3.54]), and severe IPV experiences. Decision-making (a OR 0.81, 95% CI: [0.68, 0.96]) played a protective role against membership in the high sexual and physical violence class compared to the reference category. Using path analysis, we found that labor force participation partially mediated the path from wealth index and education to IPV severity. Findings indicate the need for interventions that aim to keep girls in school and target schools, communities, and media platforms to address gender norms, economic vulnerability, and comprehensive screening for multiple forms of violence.

In urban gig economies around the world, platform labour is predominantly migrant labour, yet research on the intersection of the gig economy and labour migration remains scant. Our experience with two action research projects, spanning six cities on four continents, has taught us how platform work impacts the structural vulnerability of migrant workers. This leads us to two claims that should recalibrate the gig economy research agenda. First, we argue that platform labour simultaneously degrades working conditions while offering migrants much-needed opportunities to improve their livelihoods. Second, we contend that the reclassification of gig workers as employees is by itself not sufficient to counter the precarisation of migrant gig work. Instead, we need ambitious policies at the intersection of immigration, social welfare, and employment regulation that push back against the digitally mediated commodification of migrant labour worldwide.

Platform work is often characterised by economic insecurity, dehumanising control procedures, isolation, deepening racial, economic and gender inequalities, and other socio-economic problems. There are lively debates underway concerned with how to regulate or limit the negative effects of platform capitalism. This article reviews two of the most common calls for action – regulation and platform co-operatives. We argue that there is also an unexplored, complementary option, which uses the network effects of platforms to provide greater benefits for platform workers. To understand this alternative, we introduce the American Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) mechanism for employee buyouts, redefine the model according to the main cooperative values, and apply it to the platform economy. We conclude that there is a third option is available to governments and municipalities, namely to require an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in the local subsidiary of the platform company. Keywords: Platform economy, platform co-operativism, employee buyouts, platform ESOP

PurposeThe author analyses the strategies developed by workers and unions to obtain representation and the successes and limitations of the strategies, in a context of platform work such as Spanish dominated by labour relations of employee workers.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical material is the result of a series of in-depth interviews conducted between August 2020 and September 2021 with 41 workers, 15 of them union delegates, in addition to 4 union members and a labour lawyer. From these interviews, the author obtains a detailed account of the working conditions and the different phases that unionism has gone through in its objective of obtaining representation in a completely new sector.FindingsThe author found that employment in the relationship does not solve all the problems of platform work, especially those related to algorithmic control, but employment in the relationship provides advantages such as the right to representation. Workers play an important role in union strategies.Originality/valueThis study is the first in Spain, where platform work in passenger transport includes the employment relationship as a legal contracting mechanism.

Introducing this volume, this article reflects on recent changes that brought to the editors’ attention the need for this special issue on the methodological and ethical challenges facing those who research precarious, virtual and clandestine labour in the 21st century. An exponential spread of algorithmically managed platform labour, just-in-time working, micro-work, teleworking and other trends associated with digitalisation has converged with traditional patterns of work in the informal economy, including clandestine practices, such as the use of child labour, trafficked labour and slave labour, to create a dynamically shifting labour market that cannot be captured by traditional means using existing indicators. Simultaneously, digitalisation has introduced the possibility of new research methods, raising new ethical challenges, as well as stimulating the adaptation of older forms of ethnographic research including participant observation and action research. It discusses the articles in this issue, suggesting that they form the basis of an ongoing debate.

The expansion of the platform economy has altered the spatial organization of work and employment relations, leading to deregulation and eroding workers’ social power. However, despite the radical individualization and precarization of platform work, workers demonstrate agency. This article explores the political strategies employed by place-based platform workers, with a particular focus on the spatiality of their collective action. Using an ethnographic methodology, the article analyses the case studies of drivers’ trade associations in Chile and the couriers’ organization in Spain. The results show significant similarities between the two groups: (a) non-conventional forms of labour activism; (b) using social media to share experiences, foster solidarity and organize collectively; (c) organizing in large cities; (d) starting locally and progressing to higher scales, and (e) building national and international alliances. The article concludes that workers respond to the spatial organization of work by platforms in a multi-scalar way that is strongly influenced by both their imaginaries and the political and regulatory context.

The article examines the origins of the Global Labour Journal (GLJ) and its goal of broadening labour studies. It shows how, over the past decade, the GLJ has recorded and analysed the forms of action and organisation that fall outside the traditional focus of labour studies. Through a range of careful case studies, the Journal has made an important contribution to the growing field of global labour studies. The two topics that have been the focus of most attention across all types of submissions have been: 1) precarious work and new forms of labour struggles; and 2) international trade unionism or transnational/global labour. The Journal has been successful in giving a platform to content from the Global South, but it is uneven and limited. Another major limitation is the failure to bridge the divide between the big questions raised in the Marx/Polanyi debates during the early phase of the Journal with the more concrete accounts of labour rediscovering its power on the periphery of labour movement. The article concludes by pointing towards possible options facing labour and the choices facing the GLJ. KEY WORDS: Global labour; global labour studies; precarious work; future of labour

This article extends the economic-sociological concept of embeddedness to encompass not only social networks of, for example, friendship or kinship ties, but also economic networks of ownership and control relationships. Applying these ideas to the case of digital platform labour pinpoints two possible scenarios. When platforms take the role of market intermediaries, economic ties are thin and workers are left to their own devices, in a form of ‘disembeddedness’. When platforms partake in intricate inter-firm outsourcing structures, economic ties envelop workers in a ‘deep embeddedness’ which involves both stronger constraints and higher rewards. With this added dimension, the notion of embeddedness becomes a compelling tool to describe the social structures that frame economic action, including the power imbalances that characterize digital labour in the global economy.

The world of work is changing. Communications technologies and digital platforms have enabled some types of work to be delivered from anywhere in the world by anyone with a computer and an internet connection. This digitally-mediated work brings jobs to parts of the world traditionally characterized by low incomes and high unemployment rates. As such, it has been touted by governments, third-sector organizations, and the private sector as a novel strategy of economic development. Drawing on a four-year study with 65 workers in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda, we examine the development implications of the gig economy on labour in Africa. We offer four analytical development dimensions through which platform-based remote work impacts the lives and livelihoods of African workers, i.e. freedom, flexibility, precarity and vulnerablity. We argue that these dimensions should be understood in a continuum to better explain the working conditions and lives of workers in the gig economy.

Purpose In a fast evolving labour market, higher education graduates need to develop employability competences. Key in becoming employable is the ability to reflect on learning experiences, both within a curriculum as well as extra-curricular and work placements. This paper wants to conceptualise how an online learning platform might entail a reflective practice that systematically supports students in reflecting on their learning experiences. Design/methodology/approach When studying online learning platforms for developing students' employability competences, it became clear that the effectiveness of the platform depends on how the platform guides students' reflective practice. In turn, the authors studied which features (tools, services and resources) of the online learning platform are guiding the reflective practice. Findings This resulted in the introduction of an online learning platform, containing a comprehensive set of online learning tools and services, which supports students' reflective practice and, in turn, their employability competences. The online platform facilitates both feedback from curricular and work-related learning experiences and can be used as a start by students for showcasing their employability competences. The reflective practice consists of a recurrent, systematic process of reflection, containing various phases: become aware, analyse current state, draft and plan a solution, take action and, finally, reflect in and on action. Research limitations/implications Future research revolves around studying the features of online learning platforms and their role in fostering students' reflection and employability competences. Practical implications The conceptual model provides concrete indicators on how to implement online learning platforms for supporting students' reflection and employability competences. Originality/value This is the first article that analyses an online learning platform that guides students' reflective practice and fosters their employability competences. The authors provide concrete suggestions on how to model the online platform, building further on reflective practice theory.

The shift from flood protection to flood risk management, together with recent arguments on incorporating culture in managing risk, underscores the application of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in managing disasters from flood hazards. Yet, documentation and incorporation of TEK into practice remains a challenge. This article contributes to addressing this challenge by exploring the existence of TEK to flooding in the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda. Using semi-structured interviews, data were collected from residents of the Nyamwamba watershed where intense flash floods caused deadly impacts in May 2013. Collected data were analysed using content, thematic and interpretive analysis techniques. Results indicate that TEK is exhibited through various traditional ecological approaches (TEAs). Although endangered, TEAs (conducted through collective action for a communally accepted end) are framed in three main activities: (1) assessment and prediction of rainfall and flood by the traditional hydro-meteorologist (diviner) and the traditional rain forecaster (rainmaker); (2) the mountain cleansing ritual (which act as flood risk awareness platform); and (3) immunising riverine communities through planting certain indigenous plants, which improve hydrological systems through their high conservation value for native ecological diversity. As most TEAs are conducted through collective action, they represent a platform to understand local capacities and enhance adoption of measures, and/or a source of knowledge for new measures to address flood risk. Therefore, full-scale investigations of these TEAs, determining how relevant TEAs are fine-tuned, and (scientific) measures enculturated based on fine-tuned TEAs could result in effective flood risk management in various flood hotspots where TEAs influence action.

In 2014, New Zealand enacted the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Act in response to ongoing labour abuses on board South Korean vessels in New Zealand’s foreign charter vessel sector. Importantly, the legislation expresses the universality of the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda: all member countries must pursue policies based on the strategic objectives of equality, dignity, safe working conditions and that workers are protected from exploitation. The Act was in response to the identification of widespread labour abuses in this sector. In June 2011, the extent of the abuses came to light when 32 Indonesian crewmen of the Oyang 75 walked off their vessel. In this paper, we explore how a range of stakeholders worked organically to bring about change. We do this qualitatively by combining semi-structured interview (with over 160 Indonesian migrant crewmen between 2011 and 2017), observation and document analysis. We analyse our data through the lens of participatory action research which provides a framework to document the processes of who was involved, the cycles of change, what was achieved in each cycle, and importantly the platform for change. Specifically, we look at how stakeholders – the crew themselves, their advocates, academics, non-governmental organisations, journalists, activists, among others – all played a part in achieving legislated protections.

It was noted that globally, sexual harassment (SH), abuse, and exploitation in higher education institutions (HEIs) remain a problem. In Uganda, it regularly made headlines in the media. Yet, it was only after high-profile cases were reported in the media that a spotlight was put on the problem. Moreover, despite there being policies on sexual harassment, changes in reporting processes, and a roster for the swift investigation of sexual harassment cases, sexual harassment persisted in the respective units of Makerere University. The study reported here was based on a project code-named “Whole University Approach: Kicking Sexual Harassment out of Higher Education Institutions in Uganda” (hereafter referred to as the KISH Project). It was action research intended to move beyond feminizing SH interventions and draw in all the key stakeholders with respectively tailored interventions that were need-based. The project applied multiple interventions targeting different stakeholders (including students, academic and support staff, and administrators) to address gaps, prevention, and support for the survivors of SH in HEIs. One of the project components is a “men's hub,” which is aimed at providing space for both male staff and male students to hold dialogs on positive masculinity and call them to act as agents of change in a bid to address sexual harassment within higher education institutions (HEIs). As a platform that brings men together to discuss the issues of sexual harassment, the sessions at the men's hub enhanced their confidence and ability to prevent and respond to sexual harassment as well as their knowledge about the issues of masculinity and how they relate to sexual harassment. It was found to be an empowering platform with opportunities for awareness creation and the potential for amplifying the role of men in influencing change by speaking up and acting on their masculinity to address sexual harassment.

Following years of declining labour activism, militant forms of worker mobilization have recently emerged in the Italian platform economy and logistics sector, exhibiting novel forms of organization and action repertoires. This article investigates two cases which have been ongoing since 2011, namely mobilizations by logistics porters and food delivery couriers. Both cases seem puzzling since workers have mobilized under circumstances normally associated with non-mobilization, meaning workplaces characterized by technological innovation and absent or ineffective trade unions. How have these mobilizations occurred? We argue that these workers successfully overcame such circumstances by relying on resources and opportunities related to their workplace and external to it, which they have been able to create and develop over several years. We gathered data from semi-structured interviews with workers, union representatives and lawyers, and participated at political meetings, strikes and protest events in four Italian cities between 2018 and 2019.

Digitally mediated role plays indicate potential for collaboration, social exchange of information and knowledge as well as motivation for learning beyond classroom time. These elements are critical for ESL learners’ development of language and argumentative writing practices. The aim of this research project was to investigate how students’ engagement with and participation in online role play collaborative arguments shaped their literacy practices, and influenced their beliefs and thinking regarding particular societal issue. This qualitative research project based on a larger ethnographic case study and tools of action research investigated students’ interactions and experiences before, during and after the online role play. The study involved 20 ESL pre‑service students at one university in Uganda and was conducted in both the real and online spaces. The real space involved face‑to‑face sessions aimed at building students’ confidence in using blogs for online role play. While the online space involved non‑participant observations to gain understanding of the social dynamics of students’ engagement in online role play, and the opportunities for students to engage in literacy practices related to online argumentative compositions. The study findings indicated that engagement in online role play using blog platform provided a rich environment for learners to exercise their creativity, orchestrate multiple ways of meaning‑making and build tactical relations for purposes of collective action. Furthermore, the use of online role play collaborative arguments facilitated a shift from “ascribed” to “achieved” identities where students did not only become aware that they were dealing with issues larger than individual perspectives, associated with school, family, culture and the legal system, but also that there need for them to take part in the civic action.

Surveillance plays a pivotal role in overcoming antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacterial pathogens, and a variety of surveillance systems have been set up and employed in many countries. In 2015, the World Health Organization launched the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS) as a part of the global action plan to enhance national and global surveillance and research. The aims of GLASS are to foster development of national surveillance systems and to enable collection, analysis and sharing of standardised, comparable and validated data on AMR between different countries. The South Korean AMR surveillance system, Kor-GLASS, is compatible with the GLASS platform and was established in 2016 and based on the principles of representativeness, specialisation, harmonisation and localisation. In this report, we summarise principles and processes in order to share our experiences with other countries planning to establish a national AMR surveillance system. The pilot operation of Kor-GLASS allowed us to understand the national burden of specific infectious diseases and the status of bacterial AMR. Issues pertaining to high costs and labour-intensive operation were raised during the pilot, and improvements are being made.

Abstract The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted by the entire UN System, the European Commission and many countries provide an unprecedented platform for intersectoral action on the social and commercial determinants of health. The 17 sectoral goals come with numerous specific targets that lend themselves to propose suitable action for goal achievement. Working with other sectors, however, has often proven cumbersome, marred by indifference, skepticism, missing political mandates or sheer resistance. All too often, health sector battle cries for healthy public policies or Health in All Policies have been badly received, treated as impositions or as irrelevant to the policy goals of other sectors. An alternative strategy, as proposed in this workshop, is to focus on the so-called co-benefits. Co-benefits are substantial specific benefits to the other sectors that can be gained by investing in health-related actions. In other words, 'don't ask what other sectors can do for health, ask what health can do for other sectors and their achievement of policy goals '. For many of the SDGs complex chains of causality for the co-benefits are well established. For example, health literacy interventions have, via a complex causal chain, proven positive effects on educational attainment, academic performance and labour market participation. Adopting health literacy interventions in educational settings would therefore produce substantial and specific benefits contributing to the achievement of 'SDG4 quality education'. To give policymakers the analysis that they require for intersectoral decision making we would need to estimate the magnitude of these effects. Co-benefits that produce only negligible effects can be left aside. We would also need to understand the return on investment. Small or negative return on investment would not be desirable. Making the case for co-benefits, however is not enough. We would also need to focus on the governance structures for intersectoral dialogue and decision making. They need to facilitate greater degrees of collaboration and cooperation while at the same time fostering accountability. This includes: cabinet committees; parliamentary committees; inter-departmental units and committees; mergers and mega-ministries; joint budgeting; delegated financing; involvement of civil society, stakeholders and industry. Governance instruments for intersectoral implementation can include, just to name a few from a potentially very long list, e.g. Standards of good practice, conflict of interest policies, competitive bidding, contracts. This workshop is based on the preliminary results from a comprehensive study. The panelists will address five key issues Co-benefits and SDGs: scope for joint action (Schmitt)Co-benefits and SDG5 Gender Equality (Falkenbach)Co-benefits and SDG13 Climate Action (Valentine)Co-benefits and SDG11 Sustainable Cities and Communities (Mehdipanah)Co-benefits and SDG17 Partnerships: Aid and trade (Jarman) Key messages The health sector can and should be a vital contributor to achieving all the SDGs. Focusing on co-benefits and shared goals allows us to overcome the limitations of Health in All Policies. Panelists: Tugce Schmitt EUPHA, Utrecht, Netherlands Contact: info@schmitt-t.com Michelle Falkenbach University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA Contact: michfalk@umich.edu Nicole Valentine WHO, Geneva, Switzerland Contact: valentinen@who.int Roshanak Mehdipanah University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA Contact: rmehdipa@umich.edu Holly Jarman University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA Contact: hjarman@umich.edu

'Shut up, Graeme; I want to see those two rooting.'-- Description by a spectator of her own thoughts during Bulldog Front, Underground Productions, Cement Box Theatre, Brisbane, June 1999. A split scene in a small theatre, with a transverse stage faced from both sides by audiences. On a raised platform, two co-workers from a recruitment firm hired to sell forced-labour camps for the unemployed to the Australian public extend their awkward flirtation to a slow, gentle sexual encounter. Separated by several metres and a small patch of light, their shaven-headed supervisor stares down a gun barrel wielded by a former employee who has sold the firm's secrets to a competitor, then returned to negotiate terms of blackmail regarding their new contract. The scenes, observed and reported on by two other employees (as characters and as actors) from the space of the audience, end simultaneously. As the sounds of heterosexual coitus reach a (relatively) subdued climax, the former employee, a young man utterly unprepared for the reaction his threat receives, falls through the window of the office as he writhes away from the supervisor's angry tirade. Is this exploitative? If so, of whom and in what way? From March to June of this year, my co-workers and I on the Bulldog Front project at the University of Queensland attempted to realise the political potential of a physically-oriented rehearsal style. The mode of operation of the show -- the way it was rehearsed and performed, as well as the mode of its reception (for the audience only sees the 'product', one of the thorns in the side of 'experimental' praxis the world over) -- concentrated almost entirely upon the labour of the actors to develop and realise the operation of political forces through physical action. The politicisation of bodily desire within this framework was not an avowed intention at the beginning on the process, neither textually nor in the conception of the action by the creative team. However, the role of discourses regarding desire asserted themselves repeatedly in the course of realising the action -- and the interesting aspect is how easily, in comparison to methods of work we had experienced previously, this process allowed us -- in fact, forced us -- to address the social implications of specifically sexual desire within a textual matrix which often actively marginalised it. The scene in question did not arise, for instance, because of some misguided wish on the part of the producers to include a 'sex scene'. Indeed, the scene took place in low light, with clothes remaining in place - the action was obviously mimed, although the actor's bodies were in full contact. The violence in the other part of the split scene, by way of comparison, took on several sexualised manifestations, including the obviously phallic weapon and the grabbing of the employee's crotch while he cowered on a table. Contextually, the play's action up to that point had attempted to diversify the largely homosocial contact of the office and street in question in terms of the manifestation of male sexuality. The male co-worker in the 'sex' scene, Anthony, was engaging in intercourse with the newly-employed daughter of the company's owner. Throughout the play, Anthony's sometimes overtly sexual attitude to his work -- 'straight to bed on both of 'em,' he claims of his ability to derive (non-sexual) favours from the employees of a prospective 'victim' -- engaged in a dialogue with his attitudes towards his own sexual relations. The character of Teara, his co-participant, was by contrast desexualised in the office context -- or so it might have seemed in the text. An examination of the play reveals that other factors -- notably the fact that it's her first day back after working in Europe for three years -- mediate this verbal marginalisation. But to what extent can her later sacrifice of the relationship that develops between them -- and, indeed, of Anthony's life -- be read into her actions with regard to the staged encounter, particularly because she plays pursuer far more than pursued (Anthony, it seems, being far from competent in this area)? Is she sublimating her father-murder (her wish to take over the company) into physical 'conquest' of Anthony, who seems the perfect candidate according to the arrayed forces within the company (or the society)? Does this masculinised reading of her actions rob her of female psycho-identity? Does the anecdotal evidence of female audience members saying they enjoyed this scene more than any of the others have any relevance to the question of exploitation? Do any of these questions matter? What place, it may be asked, does desire have in the creation of a theatre of politics? It has, I would argue, everything to do with it. The question of exploitation or misrepresentation is not only a real one, it is anything but a side issue. This is not a question derived from guilt, either male or Catholic in my case, but from a wish to challenge the mode of storytelling without compromising the story I wish to tell, which must involve an ongoing inquiry as to what exactly -- and where exactly -- that story is. 'Desire' in this context should be read as that contact between actors which can be sexualised in terms of the discourses of the body -- and the reason why I state that 'desire was not the point' is that there was less of that in this fairly passionate production than I, for one, had expected. However, no opportunity for inquiry into this sexualisation had to be avoided, simply because the methodology of rehearsal (for a reference point, look to Thomas Richards's At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions) allowed the physicalisation of impulses which did not have to necessarily engage directly with the social situation as experienced by the actor. Most productions of my experience, it must be noted, begin with the actor -- usually her or his 'mind', in the form of seated and abstracted discussion about the possiblity of the concrete event of the text. From such seeds, many stunted representations and discursive effects of erotic and thanotic desire have sprung -- it is not an accident that displays of passion in Hamlet, the tragedy most self-consciously elevated by theatre cognoscenti, are ones of frustation. This frustation is doubtless a familiar one to many Western actors, precisely because the terms of their theatre are not constructed from the inside to even acknowledge, much less codify or liberate, desire. The address of such issues in 'psychological' terms usually ends up translating various social codes which have been assimilated by the actor regarding her/his own sexuality into the action of the play -- or more often, into the process of rehearsal, where they are often challenged by the actor for 'personal reasons' or eliminated by the producers for the 'public safety'. This is not to say that all productions which do not include a cornucopia of sexual acts, or even suggestions thereof, are concessions of artistic dignity or political commitment. The subject of this article cannot, for reasons of space, be about even the barest generalities regarding the topic of realising sexual desire -- even simply heterosexual desire, as if there were anything simple about it -- on the stage or between actors. The question remains one, then, of: did we -- that is to say, as writer/director, did I -- exploit the performers as sexual beings, either deliberately or through failing to satisfactorily address the issues of desire's representation in the production? Did I, while juxtaposing consensual heterosexual intercourse with sadomasochistic homoeros, merely read the desire of the female character into a phallocentric mode of discourse? Or is the question that I would prefer to ask (and the answer to that is emphatically 'yes'): Was the scene staged simply in order to excite the desire of the paying customer to see heterosexual intercourse? I can claim, and to my mind rightly, that the answer is 'no', and I'm off the hook -- I can tell myself I am not a pornographer. But take the word 'simply' out of the sentence, and we're back to square one, because something else was obviously going on. The question of whether or not the contexual devices employed in this scene justified the staged manifestations of desire is one for the individual audience member. The point of this article is to explain my thinking about the scene; it is also to explain how, to my mind, the approach to the actor's craft is a vital and near-neglected area of contestation with regard to how desire begins to be staged, and how modifications of the performer's act by the director impact upon the physicalisation of -- among other things -- heterosexual desire. The performance which seeks to address social forces in its approach to the action, as well as the dramatic elements of the action itself, must continually ask such questions without forgetting that a performance is not a lecture (and if every fibre is infused with the spirit of inquiry, it doesn't have to be). This is the promise of a performance approach to political theatre that doesn't just base itself in intellectual analysis. References Thomas Richards. At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions. London: Routledge, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Marcel Dorney. "Don't Lean on the Window: Desire's Presence and Representation in Political Drama." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.5 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/window.php>. Chicago style: Marcel Dorney, "Don't Lean on the Window: Desire's Presence and Representation in Political Drama," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 5 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/window.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Marcel Dorney. (1999) Don't lean on the window: desire's presence and representation in political drama. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/window.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction This article explores the changing relational quality of “the shadow of hierarchy”, in the context of the merging of platforms with infrastructure as the source of the shadow of hierarchy. In governance and regulatory studies, the shadow of hierarchy (or variations thereof), describes the space of influence that hierarchal organisations and infrastructures have (Héritier and Lehmkuhl; Lance et al.). A shift in who/what casts the shadow of hierarchy will necessarily result in changes to the attendant relational values, logics, and (techno)socialities that constitute the shadow, and a new arrangement of shadow that presents new challenges and opportunities. This article reflects on relevant literature to consider two different ways the shadow of hierarchy has qualitatively changed as platforms, rather than infrastructures, come to cast the shadow of hierarchy – an increase in scalability; and new socio-technical arrangements of (non)participation – and the opportunities and challenges therein. The article concludes that more concerted efforts are needed to design the shadow, given a seemingly directionless desire to enact data-driven solutions. The Shadow of Hierarchy, Infrastructures, and Platforms The shadow of hierarchy refers to how institutional, infrastructural, and organisational hierarchies create a relational zone of influence over a particular space. This commonly refers to executive decisions and legislation created by nation states, which are cast over private and non-governmental actors (Héritier and Lehmkuhl, 2). Lance et al. (252–53) argue that the shadow of hierarchy is a productive and desirable thing. Exploring the shadow of hierarchy in the context of how geospatial data agencies govern their data, Lance et al. find that the shadow of hierarchy enables the networked governance approaches that agencies adopt. This is because operating in the shadow of institutions provides authority, confers bureaucratic legitimacy and top-down power, and offers financial support. The darkness of the shadow is thus less a moral or ethicopolitical statement (such as that suggested by Fisher and Bolter, who use the idea of darkness to unpack the morality of tourism involving death and human suffering), and instead a relationality; an expression of differing values, logics, and (techno)socialities internal and external to those infrastructures and institutions that cast it (Gehl and McKelvey). The shadow of hierarchy might therefore be thought of as a field of relational influences and power that a social body casts over society, by virtue of a privileged position vis-a-vis society. It modulates society’s “light”; the resources (Bourdieu) and power relationships (Foucault) that run through social life, as parsed through a certain institutional and infrastructural worldview (the thing that blocks the light to create the shadow). In this way the shadow of hierarchy is not a field of absolute blackness that obscures, but instead a gradient of light and dark that creates certain effects. The shadow of hierarchy is now, however, also being cast by decentralised, privately held, and non-hierarchal platforms that are replacing or merging with public infrastructure, creating new social effects. Platforms are digital, socio-technical systems that create relationships between different entities. They are most commonly built around a relatively fixed core function (such as a social media service like Facebook), that then interacts with a peripheral set of complementors (advertising companies and app developers in the case of social media; Baldwin and Woodard), to create new relationships, forms of value, and other interactions (van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity). In creating these relationships, platforms become inherently political (Gillespie), shaping relationships and content on the platform (Suzor) and in embodied life (Ajunwa; Eubanks). While platforms are often associated with optional consumer platforms (such as streaming services like Spotify), they have increasingly come to occupy the place of public infrastructure, and act as a powerful enabler to different socio-technical, economic, and political relationships (van Dijck, Governing Digital Societies). For instance, Plantin et al. argue that platforms have merged with infrastructures, and that once publicly held and funded institutions and essential services now share many characteristics with for-profit, privately held platforms. For example, Australia has had a long history of outsourcing employment services (Webster and Harding), and nearly privatised its entire visa processing data infrastructure (Jenkins). Platforms therefore have a greater role in casting the shadow of hierarchy than before. In doing so, they cast a shadow that is qualitatively different, modulated through a different set of relational values and (techno)socialities. Scalability A key difference and selling point of platforms is their scalability; since they can rapidly and easily up- and down-scale their functionalities in a way that traditional infrastructure cannot (Plantin et al.). The ability to respond “on-demand” to infrastructural requirements has made platforms the go-to service delivery option in the neo-liberalised public infrastructure environment (van Dijck, Governing Digital Societies). For instance, services providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure provide on demand computing capacity for many nations’ most valuable services, including their intelligence and security capabilities (Amoore, Cloud Ethics; Konkel). The value of such platforms to government lies in the reduced cost and risk that comes with using rented capabilities, and the enhanced flexibility to increase or decrease their usage as required, without any of the economic sunk costs attached to owning the infrastructure. Scalability is, however, not just about on-demand technical capability, but about how platforms can change the scale of socio-technical relationships and services that are mediated through the platform. This changes the relational quality of the shadow of hierarchy, as activities and services occurring within the shadow are now connected into a larger and rapidly modulating scale. Scalability allows the shadow of hierarchy to extend from those in proximity to institutions to the broader population in general. For example, individual citizens can more easily “reach up” into governmental services and agencies as a part of completing their everyday business through platform such as MyGov in Australia (Services Australia). Using a smartphone application, citizens are afforded a more personalised and adaptive experience of the welfare state, as engaging with welfare services is no-longer tied to specific “brick-and-mortar” locations, but constantly available through a smartphone app and web portal. Multiple government services including healthcare and taxation are also connected to this platform, allowing users to reach across multiple government service domains to complete their personal business, seeking information and services that would have once required separate communications with different branches of government. The individual’s capacities to engage with the state have therefore upscaled with this change in the shadow, retaining a productivity and capacity enhancing quality that is reminiscent of older infrastructures and institutions, as the individual and their lived context is brought closer to the institutions themselves. Scale, however, comes with complications. The fundamental driver for scalability and its adaptive qualities is datafication. This means individuals and organisations are inflecting their operational and relational logics with the logic of datafication: a need to capture all data, at all times (van Dijck, Datafication; Fourcade and Healy). Platforms, especially privately held platforms, benefit significantly from this, as they rely on data to drive and refine their algorithmic tools, and ultimately create actionable intelligence that benefits their operations. Thus, scalability allows platforms to better “reach down” into individual lives and different social domains to fuel their operations. For example, as public transport services become increasingly datafied into mobility-as-a-service (MAAS) systems, ride sharing and on-demand transportation platforms like Uber and Lyft become incorporated into the public transport ecosystem (Lyons et al.). These platforms capture geospatial, behavioural, and reputational data from users and drivers during their interactions with the platform (Rosenblat and Stark; Attoh et al.). This generates additional value, and profits, for the platform itself with limited value returned to the user or the broader public it supports, outside of the transport service. It also places the platform in a position to gain wider access to the population and their data, by virtue of operating as a part of a public service. In this way the shadow of hierarchy may exacerbate inequity. The (dis)benefits of the shadow of hierarchy become unevenly spread amongst actors within its field, a function of an increased scalability that connects individuals into much broader assemblages of datafication. For Eubank, this can entrench existing economic and social inequalities by forcing those in need to engage with digitally mediated welfare systems that rely on distant and opaque computational judgements. Local services are subject to increased digital surveillance, a removal of agency from frontline advocates, and algorithmic judgement at scale. More fortunate citizens are also still at risk, with Nardi and Ekbia arguing that many digitally scaled relationships are examples of “heteromation”, whereby platforms convince actors in the platform to labour for free, such as through providing ratings which establish a platform’s reputational economy. Such labour fuels the operation of the platform through exploiting users, who become both a product/resource (as a source of data for third party advertisers) and a performer of unrewarded digital labour, such as through providing user reviews that help guide a platform’s algorithm(s). Both these examples represent a particularly disconcerting outcome for the shadow of hierarchy, which has its roots in public sector institutions who operate for a common good through shared and publicly held infrastructure. In shifting towards platforms, especially privately held platforms, value is transmitted to private corporations and not the public or the commons, as was the case with traditional infrastructure. The public also comes to own the risks attached to platforms if they become tied to public services, placing a further burden on the public if the platform fails, while reaping none of the profit and value generated through datafication. This is a poor bargain at best. (Non)Participation Scalability forms the basis for a further predicament: a changing socio-technical dynamic of (non)participation between individuals and services. According to Star (118), infrastructures are defined through their relationships to a given context. These relationships, which often exist as boundary objects between different communities, are “loosely structured in common use, and become tightly bound in particular locations” (Star, 118). While platforms are certainly boundary objects and relationally defined, the affordances of cloud computing have enabled a decoupling from physical location, and the operation of platforms across time and space through distributed digital nodes (smartphones, computers, and other localised hardware) and powerful algorithms that sort and process requests for service. This does not mean location is not important for the cloud (see Amoore, Cloud Geographies), but platforms are less likely to have a physically co-located presence in the same way traditional infrastructures had. Without the same institutional and infrastructural footprint, the modality for participating in and with the shadow of hierarchy that platforms cast becomes qualitatively different and predicated on digital intermediaries. Replacing a physical and human footprint with algorithmically supported and decentralised computing power allows scalability and some efficiency improvements, but it also removes taken-for-granted touchpoints for contestation and recourse. For example, ride-sharing platform Uber operates globally, and has expressed interest in operating in complement to (and perhaps in competition with) public transport services in some cities (Hall et al.; Conger). Given that Uber would come to operate as a part of the shadow of hierarchy that transport authorities cast over said cities, it would not be unreasonable to expect Uber to be subject to comparable advocacy, adjudication, transparency, and complaint-handling requirements. Unfortunately, it is unclear if this would be the case, with examples suggesting that Uber would use the scalability of its platform to avoid these mechanisms. This is revealed by ongoing legal action launched by concerned Uber drivers in the United Kingdom, who have sought access to the profiling data that Uber uses to manage and monitor its drivers (Sawers). The challenge has relied on transnational law (the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation), with UK-based drivers lodging claims in Amsterdam to initiate the challenge. Such costly and complex actions are beyond the means of many, but demonstrate how reasonable participation in socio-technical and governance relationships (like contestations) might become limited, depending on how the shadow of hierarchy changes with the incorporation of platforms. Even if legal challenges for transparency are successful, they may not produce meaningful change. For instance, O’Neil links algorithmic bias to mathematical shortcomings in the variables used to measure the world; in the creation of irritational feedback loops based on incorrect data; and in the use of unsound data analysis techniques. These three factors contribute to inequitable digital metrics like predictive policing algorithms that disproportionately target racial minorities. Large amounts of selective data on minorities create myopic algorithms that direct police to target minorities, creating more selective data that reinforces the spurious model. These biases, however, are persistently inaccessible, and even when visible are often unintelligible to experts (Ananny and Crawford). The visibility of the technical “installed base” that support institutions and public services is therefore not a panacea, especially when the installed base (un)intentionally obfuscates participation in meaningful engagement like complaints handling. A negative outcome is, however, also not an inevitable thing. It is entirely possible to design platforms to allow individual users to scale up and have opportunities for enhanced participation. For instance, eGovernance and mobile governance literature have explored how citizens engage with state services at scale (Thomas and Streib; Foth et al.), and the open government movement has demonstrated the effectiveness of open data in understanding government operations (Barns; Janssen et al.), although these both have their challenges (Chadwick; Dawes). It is not a fantasy to imagine alternative configurations of the shadow of hierarchy that allow more participatory relationships. Open data could facilitate the governance of platforms at scale (Box et al.), where users are enfranchised into a platform by some form of membership right and given access to financial and governance records, in the same way that corporate shareholders are enfranchised, facilitated by the same app that provides a service. This could also be extended to decision making through voting and polling functions. Such a governance form would require radically different legal, business, and institutional structures to create and enforce this arrangement. Delacoix and Lawrence, for instance, suggest that data trusts, where a trustee is assigned legal and fiduciary responsibility to achieve maximum benefit for a specific group’s data, can be used to negotiate legal and governance relationships that meaningfully benefit the users of the trust. Trustees can be instructed to only share data to services whose algorithms are regularly audited for bias and provide datasets that are accurate representations of their users, for instance, avoiding erroneous proxies that disrupt algorithmic models. While these developments are in their infancy, it is not unreasonable to reflect on such endeavours now, as the technologies to achieve these are already in use. Conclusions There is a persistent myth that data will yield better, faster, more complete results in whatever field it is applied (Lee and Cook; Fourcade and Healy; Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier; Kitchin). This myth has led to data-driven assemblages, including artificial intelligence, platforms, surveillance, and other data-technologies, being deployed throughout social life. The public sector is no exception to this, but the deployment of any technological solution within the traditional institutions of the shadow of hierarchy is fraught with challenges, and often results in failure or unintended consequences (Henman). The complexity of these systems combined with time, budgetary, and political pressures can create a contested environment. It is this environment that moulds societies' light and resources to cast the shadow of hierarchy. Relationality within a shadow of hierarchy that reflects the complicated and competing interests of platforms is likely to present a range of unintended social consequences that are inherently emergent because they are entering into a complex system – society – that is extremely hard to model. The relational qualities of the shadow of hierarchy are therefore now more multidimensional and emergent, and experiences relating to socio-technical features like scale, and as a follow-on (non)participation, are evidence of this. Yet by being emergent, they are also directionless, a product of complex systems rather than designed and strategic intent. This is not an inherently bad thing, but given the potential for data-system and platforms to have negative or unintended consequences, it is worth considering whether remaining directionless is the best outcome. There are many examples of data-driven systems in healthcare (Obermeyer et al.), welfare (Eubanks; Henman and Marston), and economics (MacKenzie), having unintended and negative social consequences. Appropriately guiding the design and deployment of theses system also represents a growing body of knowledge and practical endeavour (Jirotka et al.; Stilgoe et al.). Armed with the knowledge of these social implications, constructing an appropriate social architecture (Box and Lemon; Box et al.) around the platforms and data systems that form the shadow of hierarchy should be encouraged. This social architecture should account for the affordances and emergent potentials of a complex social, institutional, economic, political, and technical environment, and should assist in guiding the shadow of hierarchy away from egregious challenges and towards meaningful opportunities. To be directionless is an opportunity to take a new direction. The intersection of platforms with public institutions and infrastructures has moulded society’s light into an evolving and emergent shadow of hierarchy over many domains. With the scale of the shadow changing, and shaping participation, who benefits and who loses out in the shadow of hierarchy is also changing. Equipped with insights into this change, we should not hesitate to shape this change, creating or preserving relationalities that offer the best outcomes. Defining, understanding, and practically implementing what the “best” outcome(s) are would be a valuable next step in this endeavour, and should prompt considerable discussion. 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Problem setting. The article establishes that the objective impossibility of rapid integration of Ukraine into the European European community turns it into a platform for the constant relations clarification between the West and the East. The uncertain situation of our country due to this fact dictates specific rules, according to which Ukraine should pursue an inconsistent policy related to the political and economic conjuncture, and this increases the likelihood of possible security challenges to Ukraine in the context of destabilization of the international security space. In such a situation, the adoption by a state of relevant regulations of a profile nature, which would completely meet all the challenges of our time, comprises a very important fact. Recent research and publications analysis. Many works consider general issues of national security in Ukraine, a fundamental place among which belongs to H. Sytnyk, the co-author of the National Security Strategy of Ukraine, many bills, conceptual scientific strategies and political programs in the sphere of national security of Ukraine, as well as the works by V. Abramov, N. Nyzhnyk, V. Oluyko, V. Pasichnyk et аl. The assessment of real threats and challenges to national security, as well as their geopolitical context, was conducted by S. Bielay, V. Hulay, K. Kononenko, M. Malsky, L. Novoskoltseva et al. Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem. To analyse the prerequisites, main provisions, security risks, challenges and tasks of the 2020 National Security Strategy, find out its novelties in comparison with previous strategies, as well as to determine its significance for the current situation in Ukraine. Paper main body. It has been established that since 2014, full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation has continued in Ukraine, which has all the typical features of so-called “hybrid war”, and is implemented in the forms of military and other illegal actions, reflected in almost all key spheres of life of the Ukrainian state and society in general, including information, economic and diplomatic space. So, on September 14, 2020, the President of Ukraine signed the Decree “On the National Security Strategy of Ukraine”. The content and structure of the Strategy is quite different from its previous versions adopted in 2007, 2012 and 2015. The adoption of this document was really expected, because it should have shown the authorities’ vision of threats, risks and challenges to Ukraine’s national security and determination of the ways to neutralize such threats. The new Strategy replaced one dated 2015. 2020 Strategy makes the appropriate accents and articulates problems that clarify the view of security component and this is important from the point of view of the activities of state bodies, because this is what they will rely on in the coming years when forming their action plans, primarily in the security sector. For the first time, the new Strategy is based on the following basic principles: 1) deterrence; 2) resilience; 3) interaction. This document focuses not only on military issues, but also on areas related to the security sector, information, diplomatic and economic spheres. The Strategy focuses on the fact that the Russian Federation, while continuing military actions against Ukraine, systematically uses economic, political, military, information and psychological, as well as cyber means. In addition, the Strategy takes into account the latest changes related to the crisis in global economy, the spread of the COVID-19 disease caused by coronavirus, as well as the increased risk of natural and man-made emergency situations. With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were also critical problems in the health and social protection systems, in the information sphere, and this in turn led to an increase in unemployment, destruction of established lifestyles and, in general, it threatens food development, hinders free movement of capital, goods and labour force, damaging the service sector. There is also an intensification of rivalry between key world players in the geopolitical position, in particular, between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China for world leadership. The document stipulates that acquisition of full membership of Ukraine in the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the strategic course of the state. Conclusions of the research and prospects for further studies.The 2020 National Security Strategy meets the challenges of our time and is more narrative than similar documents of previous years. Its basic principles such as deterrence, resilience and interaction provide more opportunities for updating the security sector and responding quickly and flexibly to new challenges and threats facing Ukraine. At the same time, the implementation of ideas set out in the Strategy will depend on those sub-strategic documents (strategies and programs) that are to be adopted within six months according to the new Strategy. If these documents manage to offer effective means of counteracting hostile activity, the newly adopted Strategy will become an effective planning tool, rather than another bureaucratic pro forma. Research and analysis of other new regulations defining security challenges and threats for Ukraine can be a prospect for further scientific research.

Problem setting. The progressive digitalization of all spheres of life and their confident transition to fundamentally new forms of functioning and interaction between economic entities, public administration and international relations is based on digital tools that allow using digital technologies in the digitalization of the national economy. However, the experience of their application and effective use is insufficient in comparison with developed countries, so to ensure sustainable development of society, it is necessary to thoroughly and comprehensively study the features of digital tools and their use in government and to objectively assess the prospects of digitalization in all spheres of life in modern Ukraine.Recent research and publications analysis. The issue of digitalization and the increasing use of digital technologies is present in the research of many specialists. In particular, it is necessary to note significant achievements in this field of such scientists as V. Apalkova, O. Bernaziuk, S. Vereteniuk, N. Hrytsiak, N. Deieva, A. Dobrynin, N. Drahomyretska, O. Yemelyanenko, T. Kaminska, A. Kaminskyi, G. Karcheva, O. Kachnyi , S. Koliadenko, N. Kraus, V. Kuibida, S. Kutsenko, D. Layon, I. Lopushynskyi, V. Liashenko, A. Maslov, V. Nikolaev, V. Pysarenko, A. Semenchenko, K. Semiachkov, S. Chukut and many others. However, there is a necessity for complex research, which concern the use of digital tools for ensuring sustainable development.Previously unsettled parts of the general problem. The article aimed at substantiating the directions of intensification of the use of digital tools for ensuring sustainable development in Ukraine basing on the studies of features of the usage of digital tools, the analysis of its use in various fields at the present stage of the development of our state. Paper main body. The conceptual approach to understanding the essence of sustainable development makes it possible to consider this concept as “development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The answer to public demands is given by the Sustainable Development Goals, offering a new vision of economic growth of states and new values.In the context of the needs of today’s development and the implications for future generations, we need to look at the digital economy and the increasing use of digital tools. Digitalization can not only solve today’s problems but also generate new ones, the consequences of which may be felt by the next generation in the case of inefficient use of digital technologies. In the world, digitalization processes have significantly accelerated after quarantine and affected not only developed countries but also Ukraine and other developing countries. They relate to all spheres of public life, in particular, to the interaction of citizens with public authorities.In Ukraine, the introduction of digital tools in the work of state and municipal authorities has not become as widespread as abroad, but it is worth noting some steps in this direction. The following digital tools for interaction between the government and communities are already in force or will be implemented in the nearest future: for the government – feedback from the community population; involvement of people into the managerial process. For adult residents of communities – Centres for providing administrative services, which work as centres of “Action”; consulting zones for entrepreneurs; online population survey; local chatbots. For students and schoolchildren – the opportunity to get an IT profession online; career guidance online courses; electronic magazines.Along with public authorities, digitalization processes have confidently entered the business sphere, and this has become especially noticeable in the conditions of quarantine, according to which many employees were forced to switch to remote work. Digital tools allow businesses to adapt to new realities and build relationships between employees, customers and partners on a fundamentally new basis. They help to automate routine processes and business, and also to redirect free resources in the direction of finding new ideas for business development.Digitalization has also affected the scientific sphere – today it is difficult for the average scientist to imagine his work without the use of, for example, Google tools, in particular, such as Google Cloud Platform, Google Academy, etc. Thanks to them, it is possible to conduct comprehensive research and publish their results. And the use of such specialized digital tools for scientists as Google Public Data, Dataset Search and Google Data Studio makes it possible to work effectively with data sets.Along with the scientific sphere, digitalization is closely connected with the educational field. Responding to the quarantine requirements for distance learning, the State Education Quality Service of Ukraine has introduced the following distance forms: the study of practical experience of work of participants in the certification of pedagogical staff; conducting institutional audits of general secondary education institutions.Areas of intensification of the use of digital tools to ensure sustainable development are regulatory, organizational-managerial, labour, competency-based, project, infrastructure and international. The development of digitalization and the introduction of digital tools in social processes have become inevitable, so it is necessary to ensure the implementation of digitalization procedures with maximum effect.Conclusions and prospects for further studies. Digital tools can be defined as a tool, a mean to improve communication between individuals and legal entities and the state through digital technologies and online communications. In the direction for ensuring the sustainable development of society, digital tools are essential tools that minimize resource costs, which allows you to redirect their use in a more constructive direction and, if possible, to preserve the resource potential for future generations.

In March 2020, co-authors burrough and Starnaman with Technical Director Dale MacDonald had just finished collaborating on a work of computational art, A Kitchen of One’s Own, for The Photographers’ Gallery in London. In this essay we discuss the genealogy of our Zoom performance, Epic Handwashing for Synchronous Participation, which was an extension of two earlier projects—one that was derailed due to COVID-19, and the other that resulted from our pivot towards reflecting on the pandemic experience. Our performance was a response to, and offered a collaborative moment of reflection on, the uncertain moment in time of living in a global pandemic and understanding our experience through participatory art. A Kitchen of One’s Own was commissioned for “Data/Set/Match”—a year-long program dedicated to analysing, interpreting, and visualising image datasets (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald). The image dataset we interpreted is Epic Kitchens’ 2018 collection. Epic Kitchens is a dataset of videos collected by a group of researchers whose participants create non-scripted recordings of daily activities in kitchens. It is the largest known dataset produced using first-person vision. Researchers assign each recorded action with a verb like “wash”, “peel”, “toast”, or “rub” to describe and categorise the event. Our project juxtaposed the videos from Epic Kitchens with quotes from a dataset created by Starnaman with research assistant Alyssa Yates. This work was scheduled for installation on the approximately nine by nine-foot media wall, viewable to the public inside the gallery and to passersby on the street in London’s SoHo neighborhood. However, the work was not sent until May because of the COVID-19 lockdowns in London and Dallas. Thus, feeling trapped and frustrated in our respective homes, totally separated by quarantine, but close in distance, we responded to our historical moment with art. Figure 1: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman with technical direction by Dale MacDonald, A Kitchen of One’s Own, single frame on the media wall seen from Ramilles Street. The Photographers’ Gallery, London, October 2020. A Kitchen of One’s Own explored personal and domestic kitchen spaces as mundane, politically-charged, and inspirational (fig. 1). The familiar, comforting space of the home kitchen became charged with domestic tropes of the pandemic: hand washing, sanitising, and cooking. We explained, A Kitchen of One’s Own is a speculative remix that confronts Epic Kitchens, a dataset of first-person cooking videos, with quotes from articles and social media posts on sexual harassment in professional and domestic kitchens, podcasts about the kitchen as a political space, and reflective texts by women authors about food and cooking. (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald, “Kitchen”) Taking inspiration from our Kitchen project, we pivoted for audiences online with a browser-based project, Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives. This project (fig. 2) showcases 68 videos found in Epic Kitchens’ 2018 dataset that had been tagged by researchers with the keywords “wash” or “hand”, which burrough and MacDonald optimised for the web browser and republished in a showcase on Vimeo (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald, “Epic”). Starnaman and burrough developed a new dataset of complementary quotes for this iteration including selections from literature written during or about pandemics such as the bubonic plague and the global influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Figure 2: Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives. Browser-based project for The Photographers’ Gallery and Unthinking Photography. March 2020 (https://unthinking.photography/projects/epichandwashing/). We developed Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation (fig. 3) as a Zoom performance of our browser-based project for a virtual engagement session at the Electronic Literature Organization’s (ELO) conference in the summer of 2020 (burrough and Starnaman, “Epic”). In this article, we illustrate these projects as a series of interrelated investigations, and centre on the Zoom performance, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. We then reflect on the way these works engage a range of public audiences and participants. Figure 3: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. Virtual engagement session and participatory performance hosted on Zoom for the ELO conference. This still frame shows a final group performance of hand washing at 21:56 (the complete session was 27:32). July 2020. Blurring Boundaries: Audiences, Participants, Maintenance, and Labour Our past projects demonstrate our commitment to participatory creative practices in which the boundary between audience members, performers, and participants is blurred in the generation of the work of art. Our earliest collaboration, The Laboring Self, was an installation of cardboard cut to the shape of virtual workers’ hands. We collected tracings of hands from workers on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk work platform and laser-cut them from recycled Amazon boxes. In the gallery we invited participants to inscribe or embroider the hands with statements about work before adding them to The Laboring Self installation. Audience members shared their stories, sentiments, anxieties, and hopes about the labour they perform in their everyday lives on hands that crowded a wall space during the span of the exhibition (fig. 4). This work was inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles's 1970s feminist performances in maintenance art, which elevated care-taking and everyday “maintenance” activities to the platform of fine art. In Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, Ukeles confronts the boundary between her everyday performance as a mother, woman, and artist. In particular, with regard to maintenance, Ukeles proposes to “simply do these maintenance everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art” (qtd. in Burnham). So too, we exhibited the hands of hidden workers to bring visibility to the invisible and asked audience members to become participants by putting on view their own reflections on the various forms of labour they embody. Figure 4: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman, The Laboring Self, installation view approximately 8 by 10 feet. The Dallas Museum of Art Center for Creative Connections. October 2017-January 2018. For our more recent Zoom-based performance, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation, we again focus on the hands of our audience members-turned participatory performers. As Ukeles used her hands to wash the steps of an urban museum, turning often invisible labour visible through performance, we sought to make the private act of hand washing—an act of personal protection and civic duty—a public performance in the digital town square. The individual hand, which has been central to our work in the past, synecdochally represents the worker, or in this case the person-turned-public-health-citizen. In a world of ubiquitous Zoom calls, the focus is almost always on our faces, our bodies cut off around the shoulders or mid-torso. Hands are but a fleeting on-screen guest. Yet, for this performance, our hands were at the centre of the screen, standing in for our physical effort and existential fear. Directions for Participants Before our performance, we shared this set of directions with participants: Prepare to wash your hands on Zoom in real time by setting up a camera to live stream or recruit a person to film you near your sink. Log into the Zoom link provided. Wash your hands on camera for 20 seconds while we read along with your performance. Notes from the Live Event On 18 July 2020, about 24 people participated in our event as solo participants, as couples, and as families on one Zoom call. The invitation to this project included the instruction to be camera-ready for hand washing at any household sink, so our participatory public entered the call from their kitchens and bathrooms. Before our formal introduction, a couple of tech-savvy kids drew on the Zoom screen (fig. 5), initiating a spirit of playfulness that the adults on the call stepped right into. While we had anticipated this event would elicit a sense of communal action, we were not prepared for just how community- and play-starved we all were. Figure 5: Opening Title Slide, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. ELO Virtual Engagement Session. 18 July 2020. We set the stage for the performance by introducing Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives, our spring 2020 browser-based project, and gave participants a moment to click through it and to read the texts we had culled for our database of “pandemic quotes” (burrough and Starnaman, “Epic Hand Washing Text Dataset”). Then we explained that our facilitator and Zoom host, John Murray, would be calling on the participants one at a time to wash their hands, while we took turns reading quotes from our archive. The first participant quietly washed their hands, and the pairing of our first quote created a serious tone: “so, at the bidding of the queen, they washed their hands, and all took their places…” (Boccaccio 26). However, the rhythm of the call and response, and the joy of witnessing each other in our various households across the globe, lightened the experience. We, along with participants, reveled in the intimate hygienic dance of hand washing at kitchen sinks and bathroom vanities; one after another we shifted our presence to another person’s living quarters and joined them at the sink. This was a truly mixed, global group. Scholars and artists for whom ELO is a disciplinary home rubbed virtual shoulders with our friends and their own friends who would not have attended ELO otherwise. This event replicated the same kind of shared experience across time and space that the archive of pandemic and hand washing texts elicited. These texts bring humanity together through the calamity of plague and disease, allowing for a sense of larger community, and that is exactly what we saw on the screen: human experience mediated by the screen in conversation with writers across time and connected by the word. Moreover, this event took place in July 2020, a time of “early pandemic”, a time when the complete unknown of the epidemic had given way to the acceptance of quarantining, but before the exhaustion and cynicism of The Long Confinement and Zoom fatigue had fully set in. Thus, we saw an enthusiasm to connect and play with the medium in a way that might have been impossible eight months later. Synchronous Participation as a Performance While the complete performance is archived on the ELO website, we have excerpted a clip from the performance for analysis (burrough and Starnaman, “Excerpt”). It is a 2:15 clip from the middle of the performance, during which we took turns reading quotes from our database while participants washed their hands on camera, one at a time. We showcase this selection of the performance to highlight the repetition embedded in the script. Our directions for participants and our moderator, John Murray, became repetitive mantras throughout the performance, while the reading of the quotes gave participants space to wash their hands. We read four quotes for each participant, which we measured to leave approximately thirty seconds of time for hand washing. We wanted participants to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds, following the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) guidelines, and we predicted that there would be moments when we would begin reading but participants would not yet be washing their hands. Since their performances were out of our control, we decided to read for slightly more than twenty seconds for each participant. From 0 to 22 seconds, Sabrina and our moderator, John Murray, enact the transitional directions between participants. At the start of the clip, Sabrina thanks the participants who have just finished washing their hands—our friends’ twin children, Cora and Henry, who fill the screen in Zoom’s Spotlight mode until eight seconds. The twins are at a double-vanity, washing their hands in coordinated outfits, and moving towards separate towels at the left and right sides of the screen at six seconds. At eight seconds Sabrina is spotlighted. She directs our moderator with the same “set-up phrase” that we repeat throughout the performance: “please mute everyone but us and the next selected hand washer, and don’t forget to change the spotlight to them. When you’re ready, announce who will begin washing their hands.” From 12 to 22 seconds participants are visible in Gallery View while John announces that Tina Escaga will wash their hands next (fig. 6). From 0:22 to 1:07 Tina appears in Spotlight mode. The screen is filled with Tina in the bathroom washing their hands with a white bar of soap. The next set of four quotes are read by xtine, as we watch Tina perform hand washing: "Can we not contrive that he somehow wash himself a little, that he stink not so shrewdly?” (Boccaccio 149). “We are now close to a well, which is never without the pulley and a large bucket; ’tis but a step thither, and we will wash him out of hand” (Boccaccio 149). “Among the drawbacks of illness as matter for literature there is the poverty of the language” (Woolf 33). “English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache” (Woolf 34). Figure 6: Tina washes their hands at the sink with a white bar of soap. From 1:01 to 1:29 xtine thanks Tina, repeats the set-up phrase to John, and John announces that Renee Carmichael is the next performer. The spotlight shifts from Tina to xtine to Gallery View to Renee. From 1:29 to 2:00 Renee appears at their kitchen sink and washes their hands in Spotlight mode as Sabrina can be heard reading the following four quotes: “We’ve not seen anything of the sort before...” (Camus 6). “The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits” (Camus 1). “It becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature” (Woolf 32). “They determined to attach him to the rope, and lower him into the well, there to wash himself...” (Boccaccio 149). From 2:00 to 2:15 Sabrina thanks Renee, repeats the set-up phrase, and John announces “OK, next up, Leo”. From 2:00 to 2:07 we see Sabrina in Spotlight mode, at 2:07 to 2:15 participants are visible in Gallery View, and though this clip ends at 2:15, in the full-length documentation of the performance, Leo is next seen in the Spotlight. In this short clip, it is evident that the repetition of the performance directions sets the stage for our audience / guests / performers, who voluntarily came to this ELO virtual engagement without prior rehearsal. Cora and Henry, Tina, and Renee are prepared with the camera near their sinks and wash their hands for the complete duration of our reading. Tina and Renee (and all of our adult participants) are seen in the video wearing headphones or earbuds for their performance. Our directions did not advise this, but we were encouraged to see that the participants thought ahead about their technical engagement. We also did not advise participants to turn off the water while they were scrubbing their hands. If we were to restage the event, we would include this for water sustainability purposes. It should not be so surprising to us, but we are still amazed at how thoroughly all of our participants washed their hands. Clearly, our performers had watched the directions provided by the CDC for washing viral matter from our bodies. Conclusion Our original project A Kitchen of One’s Own had viewers peering into the recorded kitchen scenes of anonymous participants in person at The Photographers’ Gallery or through the gallery window on Ramillies Street in SoHo, London. Viewers watched the private actions of strangers in their kitchens while being presented with various texts. Some offered descriptions of sexual harassment in often famous professional kitchens and others, the meditations of women about the significance of creation in their home kitchen. This developed an exploration of the significance of women’s experience in place. While fewer people were able to visit the gallery installation, A Kitchen of One’s Own, in London due to the pandemic, many people viewed Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narrative online. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation put the audience in the domestic space while sharing the historic, traumatic experience of a pandemic, dislocated across time. It invited an entirely online audience to experience a live performance of hand washing at the sinks of strangers and friends, fully mediated through screens on both sides. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation did exactly what we named it to do—engage people in a live, synchronous elevation of a mundane human action in a personal, yet ubiquitous space to a work of art, while experiencing the asynchronous voices of people who had already lived through global pandemics. This iteration offered us the embodied experience we had originally envisioned for A Kitchen of One’s Own. As a result of the pandemic, people in technologically connected communities are intimately familiar with the online interactive public that was once the realm of digitally savvy producers and users. This reality thus broadens the audience for our online projects. Our previous browser-based art and archive project An Archive of Unnamed Women was largely visited at workshops and conference presentations that we hosted. In previous projects like The Laboring Self, which was installed at the DMA and in the lobby of the California State University, San Marcos library, we transformed library patrons into a participatory-art public. In a moment of transformation, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation reinvented the pedestrian action of hand washing, like turning an ordinary visit to the library into an encounter with art. Similarly, it reinvented the ubiquitous act of hand washing into a live-for-Zoom performance. We are intrigued by transformation, and this shows in the way we accompany a project though many different forms before moving on to something completely different; our work is iterative by nature. A Kitchen of One’s Own germinated from our project An Archive of Unnamed Women, which pairs images of unnamed women from the New York Public Library with textual selections from fiction by women about women (“Archive of Unnamed Women”). That project engaged the archive and sought to reclaim these women from the obscurity of history. A Kitchen of One's Own took us into the kitchen, exploring what it means for women to labour and create in kitchens, both in ease and amid the duress of sexism and sexual harassment, through videos paired with text. With the pandemic arising in the U.S. and Europe in Spring 2020, we were swept up into the shared confusion, and like so many, we sought to make sense of a moment so catastrophic. We turned to writers of the past who had endured plagues and epidemics to help us gain clarity, creating a video and text synthesis that again allows for speculative meaning-making through fortuitous pairings. Presently, we are evolving this project from pandemic to enlightenment, with an iteration that takes up as inspiration the Instructions for the Zen Cook by thirteenth century Zen Master Eihei Dōgen Zenji. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation is an iterative work arising from the tensions of a time in transformative upheaval. It was one way we sought to make sense and bring people together in a playful experience that was beyond easy understanding. References Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Filippo and Bernardo Giunti: 1370-71. Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Edition. <http://flc.ahnu.edu.cn/__local/7/E7/75/6AB8DEBA692DD0CF6790CA70701_26DE4EC2_17EED4.pdf?e=.pdf>. Burnham, Jack. “Problems of Criticism IX: Art and Technology.” ArtForum (Jan. 1971). <http://www.artforum.com/print/197101/problems-of-criticism-ix-art-and-technology-38921>. burrough, xtine, and Sabrina Starnaman. “Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation.” Electronic Literature Organization Virtual Engagement Session. July 2020. <http://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2020/live/events/12>. ———. “Excerpt of ELO Virtual Engagement, ‘Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation’ (2:15).” Vimeo, 19 May 2021. <http://vimeo.com/xtineburrough/elo-zoom>. ———. The Laboring Self. Dallas Museum of Art Center for Creative Connections. Oct. 2017 to Jan. 2018. <http://dma.org/visit-center-creative-connections-community-projects/laboring-self>. ———. Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives: Text Dataset. Mar. 2020. <http://drive.google.com/file/d/1hSV-9l_ETTOruBpI-NCOChjuPtprlZue/view>. ———. An Archive of Unnamed Women. Browser-based project. Oct. 2019. <http://visiblewomen.net/unnamed-women/index.html>. burrough, xtine, and Sabrina Starnaman, with Technical Direction from Dale MacDonald. “A Kitchen of One’s Own.” The Photographers’ Gallery, 1-28 Oct. 2020. <http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/akitchenofonesown>. ———. “Epic Hand Washing.” Vimeo. <https://vimeo.com/showcase/4611141>. Camus, Albert. The Plague. Gallimard, 1947. <http://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-plague.pdf>. Woolf, Virginia. “On Being Ill.” The Criterion, 1926. <http://thenewcriterion1926.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/woolf-on-being-ill.pdf>.

In this paper we explore the rise of anti-gambling apps in the context of the massive expansion of gambling in new spheres of life (online and offline) and an acceleration in strategies of anticipatory and individualised management of harm caused by gambling. These apps, and the techniques and forms of labour they demand, are examples of and a mechanism through which a mode of governance premised on ‘self-care’ and ‘self-control’ is articulated and put into practice. To support this argument, we explore two government initiatives in the Australian context. Quit Pokies, a mobile app project between the Moreland City Council, North East Primary Care Partnership and the Victorian Local Governance Association, is an example of an emerging service paradigm of ‘self-care’ that uses online and mobile platforms with geo-location to deliver real time health and support interventions. A similar mobile app, Gambling Terminator, was launched by the NSW government in late 2012. Both apps work on the premise that interrupting a gaming session through a trigger, described by Quit Pokies’ creator as a “tap on the shoulder” provides gamblers the opportunity to take a reflexive stance and cut short their gambling practice in the course of play. We critically examine these apps as self-disciplining techniques of contemporary neo-liberalism directed towards anticipating and reducing the personal harm and social risk associated with gambling. We analyse the material and discursive elements, and new forms of user labour, through which this consumable media is framed and assembled. We argue that understanding the role of these apps, and mobile media more generally, in generating new techniques and technologies of the self, is important for identifying emerging modes of governance and their implications at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of cultural normalisation in online and offline environments. The Australian context is particularly germane for the way gambling permeates everyday spaces of sociality and leisure, and the potential of gambling interventions to interrupt and re-configure these spaces and institute a new kind of subject-state relation. Gambling in Australia Though a global phenomenon, the growth and expansion of gambling manifests distinctly in Australia because of its long cultural and historical attachment to games of chance. Australians are among the biggest betters and losers in the world (Ziolkowski), mainly on Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM) or pokies. As of 2013, according to The World Count of Gaming Machine (Ziolkowski), there were 198,150 EGMs in the country, of which 197,274 were slot machines, with the rest being electronic table games of roulette, blackjack and poker. There are 118 persons per machine in Australia. New South Wales is the jurisdiction with most EGMs (95,799), followed by Queensland (46,680) and Victoria (28,758) (Ziolkowski). Gambling is significant in Australian cultural history and average Australian households spend at least some money on different forms of gambling, from pokies to scratch cards, every year (Worthington et al.). In 1985, long-time gambling researcher Geoffrey Caldwell stated thatAustralians seem to take a pride in the belief that we are a nation of gamblers. Thus we do not appear to be ashamed of our gambling instincts, habits and practices. Gambling is regarded by most Australians as a normal, everyday practice in contrast to the view that gambling is a sinful activity which weakens the moral fibre of the individual and the community. (Caldwell 18) The omnipresence of gambling opportunities in most Australian states has been further facilitated by the availability of online and mobile gambling and gambling-like spaces. Social casino apps, for instance, are widely popular in Australia. The slots social casino app Slotomania was the most downloaded product in the iTunes store in 2012 (Metherell). In response to the high rate of different forms of gambling in Australia, a range of disparate interest groups have identified the expansion of gambling as a concerning trend. Health researchers have pointed out that online gamblers have a higher risk of experiencing problems with gambling (at 30%) compared to 15% in offline bettors (Hastings). The incidence of gambling problems is also disproportionately high in specific vulnerable demographics, including university students (Cervini), young adults prone to substance abuse problems (Hayatbakhsh et al.), migrants (Tanasornnarong et al.; Scull & Woolcock; Ohtsuka & Ohtsuka), pensioners (Hing & Breen), female players (Lee), Aboriginal communities (Young et al.; McMillen & Donnelly) and individuals experiencing homelessness (Holsworth et al.). While there is general recognition of the personal and public health impacts of gambling in Australia, there is a contradiction in the approach to gambling at a governance level. On one hand, its expansion is promoted and even encouraged by the federal and state governments, as gambling is an enormous source of revenue, as evidenced, for example, by the construction of the new Crown casino in Barangaroo in Sydney (Markham & Young). Campaigns trying to limit the use of poker machines, which are associated with concerns over problem gambling and addiction, are deemed by the gambling lobby as un-Australian. Paradoxically, efforts to restrict gambling or control gambling winnings have also been described as un-Australian, such as in the Australian Taxation Office’s campaign against MONA’s founder, David Walsh, whose immense art collection was acquired with the funds from a gambling scheme (Global Mail). On the other hand, people experiencing problems with gambling are often categorised as addicts and the ultimate blame (and responsibility) is attributed to the individual. In Australia, attitudes towards people who are arguably addicted to gambling are different than those towards individuals afflicted by alcohol or drug abuse (Jean). While “Australians tend to be sympathetic towards people with alcohol and other drug addictions who seek help,” unless it is seen as one of the more socially acceptable forms of occasional, controlled gambling (such as sports betting, gambling on the Melbourne Cup or celebrating ANZAC Day with Two-Up), gambling is framed as an individual “problem” and “moral failing” (Jean). The expansion of gambling is the backdrop to another development in health care and public health discourse, which have for some time now been devoted to the ideal of what Lupton has called the “digitally engaged patient” (Lupton). Technologies are central to the delivery of this model of health service provision that puts the patient at the centre of, and responsible for, their own health and medical care. Lupton has pointed out how this discourse, while appearing new, is in fact the latest version of the 1970s emphasis on the ‘patient as consumer’, an idea given an extra injection by the massive development and availability of digital and interactive web-based and mobile platforms, many of these directed towards the provision of health and health-related information and services. What this means for patients is that, rather than relying solely on professional medical expertise and care, the patient is encouraged to take on some of this medical/health work to conduct practices of ‘self-care’ (Lupton). The Discourse of ‘Self-Management’ and ‘Self-Care’ The model of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’ by ‘empowering’ digital technology has now become a dominant discourse within health and medicine, and is increasingly deployed across a range of related sectors such as welfare services. In recent research conducted on homelessness and mobile media, for example, government department staff involved in the reform of welfare services referred to ‘self-management’ as the new service paradigm that underpins their digital reform strategy. Echoing ideas and language similar to the “digitally engaged patient”, customers of Centrelink, Medicare and other ‘human services’ are being encouraged (through planned strategic initiatives aimed at shifting targeted customer groups online) to transact with government services digitally and manage their own personal profiles and health information. One departmental staff member described this in terms of an “opportunity cost”, the savings in time otherwise spent standing in long queues in service centres (Humphry). Rather than view these examples as isolated incidents taking place within or across sectors or disciplines, these are better understood as features of an emerging ‘discursive formation’ , a term Foucault used to describe the way in which particular institutions and/or the state establish a regime of truth, or an accepted social reality and which gives definition to a new historical episteme and subject: in this case that of the self-disciplined and “digitally engaged medical/health patient”. As Foucault explained, once this subject has become fully integrated into and across the social field, it is no longer easy to excavate, since it lies below the surface of articulation and is held together through everyday actions, habits and institutional routines and techniques that appear to be universal, necessary and/normal. The way in which this citizen subject becomes a universal model and norm, however, is not a straightforward or linear story and since we are in the midst of its rise, is not a story with a foretold conclusion. Nevertheless, across a range of different fields of governance: medicine; health and welfare, we can see signs of this emerging figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged patient” constituted from a range of different techniques and practices of self-governance. In Australia, this figure is at the centre of a concerted strategy of service digitisation involving a number of cross sector initiatives such as Australia’s National EHealth Strategy (2008), the National Digital Economy Strategy (2011) and the Australian Public Service Mobile Roadmap (2013). This figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged” patient, aligns well and is entirely compatible with neo-liberal formulations of the individual and the reduced role of the state as a provider of welfare and care. Berry refers to Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as outlined in his lectures to the College de France as a “particular form of post-welfare state politics in which the state essentially outsources the responsibility of the ‘well-being' of the population” (65). In the case of gambling, the neoliberal defined state enables the wedding of two seemingly contradictory stances: promoting gambling as a major source of revenue and capitalisation on the one hand, and identifying and treating gambling addiction as an individual pursuit and potential risk on the other. Risk avoidance strategies are focused on particular groups of people who are targeted for self-treatment to avoid the harm of gambling addiction, which is similarly framed as individual rather than socially and systematically produced. What unites and makes possible this alignment of neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” is first and foremost, the construction of a subject in a chronic state of ill health. This figure is positioned as terminal from the start. They are ‘sick’, a ‘patient’, an ‘addict’: in need of immediate and continuous treatment. Secondly, this neoliberal patient/addict is enabled (we could even go so far as to say ‘empowered’) by digital technology, especially smartphones and the apps available through these devices in the form of a myriad of applications for intervening and treating ones afflictions. These apps range fromself-tracking programs such as mood regulators through to social media interventions. Anti-Pokie Apps and the Neoliberal Gambler We now turn to two examples which illustrate this alignment between neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” in relation to gambling. Anti-gambling apps function to both replace or ‘take the place’ of institutions and individuals actively involved in the treatment of problem gambling and re-engineer this service through the logics of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’. Here, we depart somewhat from Foucault’s model of disciplinary power summed up in the institution (with the prison exemplifying this disciplinary logic) and move towards Deleuze’s understanding of power as exerted by the State not through enclosures but through diffuse and rhizomatic information flows and technologies (Deleuze). At the same time, we retain Foucault’s attention to the role and agency of the user in this power-dynamic, identifiable in the technics of self-regulation and in his ideas on governmentality. We now turn to analyse these apps more closely, and explore the way in which these articulate and perform these disciplinary logics. The app Quit Pokies was a joint venture of the North East Primary Care Partnership, the Victorian Local Governance Association and the Moreland City Council, launched in early 2014. The idea of the rational, self-reflexive and agentic user is evident in the description of the app by app developer Susan Rennie who described it this way: What they need is for someone to tap them on the shoulder and tell them to get out of there… I thought the phone could be that tap on the shoulder. The “tap on the shoulder” feature uses geolocation and works by emitting a sound alert when the user enters a gaming venue. It also provides information about each user’s losses at that venue. This “tap on the shoulder” is both an alert and a reprimand from past gambling sessions. Through the Responsible Gambling Fund, the NSW government also launched an anti-pokie app in 2013, Gambling Terminator, including a similar feature. The app runs on Apple and Android smartphone platforms, and when a person is inside a gambling venue in New South Wales it: sends reminder messages that interrupt gaming-machine play and gives you a chance to re-think your choices. It also provides instant access to live phone and online counselling services which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Google Play Store) Yet an approach that tries to prevent harm by anticipating the harm that will come from gambling at the point of entering a venue, also eliminates the chance of potential negotiations and encounters a user might have during a visit to the pub and how this experience will unfold. It reduces the “tap on the shoulder”, which may involve a far wider set of interactions and affects, to a software operation and it frames the pub or the club (which under some conditions functions as hubs for socialization and community building) as dangerous places that should be avoided. This has the potential to lead to further stigmatisation of gamblers, their isolation and their exclusion from everyday spaces. Moreland Mayor, Councillor Tapinos captures the implicit framing of self-care as a private act in his explanation of the app as a method for problem gamblers to avoid being stigmatised by, for example, publicly attending group meetings. Yet, curiously, the app has the potential to create a new kind of public stigmatisation through potentially drawing other peoples’ attention to users’ gambling play (as the alarm is triggered) generating embarrassment and humiliation at being “caught out” in an act framed as aberrant and literally, “alarming”. Both Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator require their users to perform ‘acts’ of physical and affective labour aimed at behaviour change and developing the skills of self-control. After downloading Quit Pokies on the iPhone and launching the app, the user is presented an initial request: “Before you set up this app. please write a list of the pokies venues that you regularly use because the app will ask you to identify these venues so it can send you alerts if you spend time in these locations. It will also use your set up location to identify other venues you might use so we recommend that you set up the App in the location where you spend most time. Congratulation on choosing Quit Pokies.”Self-performed processes include installation, setting up, updating the app software, programming in gambling venues to be detected by the smartphone’s inbuilt GPS, monitoring and responding to the program’s alerts and engaging in alternate “legitimate” forms of leisure such as going to the movies or the library, having coffee with a friend or browsing Facebook. These self-performed labours can be understood as ‘technologies of the self’, a term used by Foucault to describe the way in which social members are obliged to regulate and police their ‘selves’ through a range of different techniques. While Foucault traces the origins of ‘technologies of the self’ to the Greco-Roman texts with their emphasis on “care of oneself” as one of the duties of citizenry, he notes the shift to “self-knowledge” under Christianity around the 8th century, where it became bound up in ideals of self-renunciation and truth. Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator may signal a recuperation of the ideal of self-care, over confession and disclosure. These apps institute a set of bodily activities and obligations directed to the user’s health and wellbeing, aided through activities of self-examination such as charting your recovery through a Recovery Diary and implementing a number of suggested “Strategies for Change” such as “writing a list” and “learning about ways to manage your money better”. Writing is central to the acts of self-examination. As Jeremy Prangnell, gambling counsellor from Mission Australia for Wollongong and Shellharbour regions explained the app is “like an electronic diary, which is a really common tool for people who are trying to change their behaviour” (Thompson). The labours required by users are also implicated in the functionality and performance of the platform itself suggesting the way in which ‘technologies of the self’ simultaneously function as a form of platform work: user labour that supports and sustains the operation of digital systems and is central to the performance and continuation of digital capitalism in general (Humphry, Demanding Media). In addition to the acts of labour performed on the self and platform, bodies are themselves potentially mobilised (and put into new circuits of consumption and production), as a result of triggers to nudge users away from gambling venues, towards a range of other cultural practices in alternative social spaces considered to be more legitimate.Conclusion Whether or not these technological interventions are effective or successful is yet to be tested. Indeed, the lack of recent activity in the community forums and preponderance of issues reported on installation and use suggests otherwise, pointing to a need for more empirical research into these developments. Regardless, what we’ve tried to identify is the way in which apps such as these embody a new kind of subject-state relation that emphasises self-control of gambling harm and hastens the divestment of institutional and social responsibility at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of expansion in many respects backed by and sanctioned by the state. Patterns of smartphone take up in the mainstream population and the rise of the so called ‘mobile only population’ (ACMA) provide support for this new subject and service paradigm and are often cited as the rationale for digital service reform (APSMR). Media convergence feeds into these dynamics: service delivery becomes the new frontier for the merging of previously separate media distribution systems (Dwyer). Letters, customer service centres, face-to-face meetings and web sites, are combined and in some instances replaced, with online and mobile media platforms, accessible from multiple and mobile devices. These changes are not, however, simply the migration of services to a digital medium with little effective change to the service itself. Health and medical services are re-invented through their technological re-assemblage, bringing into play new meanings, practices and negotiations among the state, industry and neoliberal subjects (in the case of problem gambling apps, a new subjectivity, the ‘neoliberal addict’). These new assemblages are as much about bringing forth a new kind of subject and mode of governance, as they are a solution to problem gambling. This figure of the self-treating “gambler addict” can be seen to be a template for, and prototype of, a more generalised and universalised self-governing citizen: one that no longer needs or makes demands on the state but who can help themselves and manage their own harm. Paradoxically, there is the potential for new risks and harms to the very same users that accompanies this shift: their outright exclusion as a result of deprivation from basic and assumed digital access and literacy, the further stigmatisation of gamblers, the elimination of opportunities for proximal support and their exclusion from everyday spaces. References Albarrán-Torres, César. “Gambling-Machines and the Automation of Desire.” Platform: Journal of Media and Communication 5.1 (2013). Australian Communications and Media Authority. “Australians Cut the Cord.” Research Snapshots. Sydney: ACMA (2013) Berry, David. Critical Theory and the Digital. Broadway, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014 Berry, David. 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Introduction Fashion has long been associated with resistance movements across Asia and Australia, from the hand-spun cotton Khadi of Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom struggle to the traditional ankle length robe worn by Tibetans in the ‘White Wednesday Movement’ (Singh et al.; Yangzom). There are many reasons why fashion and activism have been interlinked. Fashion can serve as a form of nonverbal communication (Crane), which can convey activists’ grievances and concerns while symbolising solidarity (Doerr). It can provide an avenue to enact individual agency against repressive, authoritarian regimes (Yangzom; Doerr et al.). Fashion can codify a degree of uniformity within groups and thereby signal social identity (Craik), while also providing a means of building community (Barry and Drak). Fashion, therefore, offers activists the opportunity to develop the three characteristics which unite a social or environmental movement: a shared concern about an issue, a sense of social identity, and connections between individuals and groups. But while these fashion functions map onto movement characteristics, it remains unclear whether activists across the world deliberately include fashion into their protest action repertoires. This uncertainty exists partly because of a research and media focus on large scale, mass protests (Lester and Hutchins), where fashion characteristics are immediately visible and amenable to retrospective interpretation. This focus helps explain the rich volume of research examining the manifestation of fashion in past protests, such as the black, red, and yellow colours worn during the 1988 Aboriginal Long March of Freedom, Justice, and Hope (Maynard Dress; Coghlan), and the pink anti-Trump ‘pussyhats’ (Thompson). However, the protest events used to identify these fashion characteristics are a relatively small proportion of actions used by environmental activists (Dalton et al.; Gulliver et al.), which include not only rallies and marches, but also information evenings, letter writing sessions, and eco-activities such as tree plantings. This article aims to respond to Barnard’s (Looking) call for more empirical work on what contemporary cultural groups visually do with what they wear (see also Gerbaudo and Treré) via a content analysis of 36,676 events promoted on Facebook by 728 Australian environmental groups between 2010 and 2019. The article firstly reports findings from an analysis of this dataset to identify how fashion manifests in environmental activism, building on research demonstrating the role of protest-related nonverbal communications, such as protest signage (Bloomfield and Doolin), images (Kim), and icons, slogans, and logos (Goodnow). The article then considers what activists may seek to achieve through incorporating fashion into their action repertoire, and whether this suggests solidarity with activists seeking to effect environmental change across the wider Asian region. Fashion Activism Fashion is created through a particular assemblage of clothes, accessories, and hairstyles (Barry and Drak), which in turn forms a prevailing custom or style of dress (Craik). It is a cultural practice, providing ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) for an individual to express their social roles (Craik) and political identity (Behnke). Some scholars argue that fashion became overtly political during the 1960s and 70s, as social movements politicised appearance (Edwards). This has only increased in relevance with the rise of far right, populist, and authoritarian regimes, whose sub-cultures enact politicised identities through their distinct fashion characteristics (Gaugele and Titton; Gaugele). Fashion can therefore play an important role in protest movements, as “political subjectivities, political authority, political power and discipline are rendered visible, and thereby real, by the way fashion co-establishes them” (Behnke 3). Across the literature scholars have identified two primary avenues by which fashion and activism are connected. The first of these relates to activism targeting the fashion industry. This type of activism is found in both Asia and Australia, and promotes sustainable consumption choices such as buying used goods and transforming existing items (Chung and Yim), as well as highlighting garment worker exploitation within the fashion industry (Khan and Richards). The second avenue is called ‘fashion activism’: the use of fashion to intentionally signal a message seeking to evoke social and/or political change (Thompson). In this conceptualisation, clothing is used to signify a particular message (Crane). An example of this type of fashion activism is the ‘SlutWalk’, a protest where participants deliberately wore outfits described as slutty or revealing as a response to victim-blaming of women who had experienced sexual assault (Thompson). A key element of fashion activism thus appears to be its message intentionality. Clothes are specifically utilised to convey a message, such as a grievance about victim-blaming, which can then be incorporated into design features displayed on t-shirts, pins, and signs both on the runway and in protest events (Titton). However, while this ‘sender/receiver’ model of fashion communication (Barnard, Fashion as) can be compelling for activists, it is complex in practice. A message receiver can never have full knowledge of what message the sender seeks to signify through a particular clothing item, nor can the message sender predict how a receiver will interpret that message. Particular arrangements of clothing only hold communicative power when they are easily interpreted and related to the movement and its message, usually only intelligible to a specific culture or subculture (Goodnow). Even within that subculture it remains problematic to infer a message from a particular style of dress, as demonstrated in examples where dress is used to imply sexual consent; for example, in rape and assault cases (Lennon et al.). Given the challenges of interpreting fashion, do activists appear to use the ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) afforded by it as a protest tool? To investigate this question a pre-existing dataset of 36,676 events was analysed to ascertain if, and how, environmental activism engages with fashion (a detailed methodology is available on the OSF). Across this dataset, event categories, titles, and descriptions were reviewed to collate events connecting environmental activism to fashion. Three categories of events were found and are discussed in the next section: street theatre, sustainable fashion practices, and disruptive protest. Street Theatre Street theatre is a form of entertainment which uses public performance to raise awareness of injustices and build support for collective action (Houston and Pulido). It uses costumes as a vehicle for conveying messages about political issues and for making demands visible, and has been utilised by protesters across Australia and Asia (Roces). Many examples of street theatre were found in the dataset. For example, Extinction Rebellion (XR) consistently promoted street theatre events via sub-groups such as the ‘Red Rebels’ – a dedicated team of volunteers specialising in costumed street theatre – as well as by inviting supporters to participate in open street theatre events, such as in the ‘Halloween Dead Things Disco’. Dressed as spooky skeletons (doot, doot) and ghosts, we'll slide and shimmy down Sydney's streets in a supernatural style, as we bring attention to all the species claimed by the Sixth Mass Extinction. These street theatre events appeared to prioritise spectacle rather than disruption as a means to attract attention to their message. The Cairns and Far North Environment Centre ‘Climate Action Float’, for example, requested that attendees: Wear blue and gold or dress as your favourite reef animal, solar panel, maybe even the sun itself!? Reef & Solar // Blue & Gold is the guiding theme but we want your creativity take it from there. Most groups used street theatre as one of a range of different actions organised across a period of time. However, Climacts, a performance collective which uses ‘spectacle and satire to communicate the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crisis’ (Climacts), utilised this tactic exclusively. Their Climate Guardians collective used distinctive angel costumes to perform at the Climate Conference of Parties 26, and in various places around Australia (see images on their Website). Fig. 1: Costumed protest against Downer EDI's proposed work on the Adani coalmine; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). Sustainable Fashion Practices The second most common type of event which connected fashion with activism were those promoting sustainable fashion practices. While much research has highlighted the role of activism in raising awareness of problems related to the fashion industry (e.g. Hirscher), groups in the dataset were primarily focussed on organising activities where supporters communally created their own fashion items. The most common of these was the ‘crafternoon’, with over 260 separate crafternoon events identified in the dataset. These events brought activists together to create protest-related kit such as banners, signs, and costumes from recycled or repurposed materials, as demonstrated by Hume Climate Action Now’s ‘Crafternoon for Climate’ event: Come along on Sunday arvo for a relaxed arvo making posters and banners for upcoming Hume Climate Action Now events… Bring: Paints, textas, cardboard, fabric – whatever you’ve got lying around. Don’t have anything? That’s cool, just bring yourself. Events highlighting fashion industry problems were less frequent and tended to prioritise sharing of information about the fashion industry rather than promoting protests. For example, Transition Town Vincent held a ‘Slowing Down Fast Fashion – Transition Town Vincent Movie Night’ while the Green Embassy promoted the ‘Eco Fashion Week’. This event, held in 2017, was described as Australia’s only eco-fashion week, and included runway shows, music, and public talks. Other events also focussed on public talks, such as a Conservation Council of ACT event called ‘Green Drinks Canberra October 2017: Summer Edwards on the fashion industry’ and a panel discussion organised by a group called SEE-Change entitled ‘The Sustainable Wardrobe’. Disruptive Protest and T-Shirts Few events in the dataset mentioned elements of fashion outside of street theatre or sustainable fashion practices, with only one organisation explicitly connecting fashion with activism in its event details. This group – Australian Youth Climate Coalition – organised an event called ‘Activism in Fashion: Tote Bags, T-shirts and Poster Painting!’, which asked: How can we consistently be involved in campaigning while life can be so busy? Can we still be loud and get a message across without saying a word? The iconic 21st century activist "t-shirt and tote-bag" combination is hard to miss these days! Unlike street theatre and sustainable fashion practices, fashion appeared to be a consideration for only a small number of disruptive protests promoted by environmental groups in Australia. XR Brisbane sought to organise a fashion parade during the 2019 Rebellion Week, while XR protesters in Melbourne stripped down to underwear for a march through Melbourne city arcades (see also Turbet). Few common fashion elements appeared consistently on individual activists participating in events, and these were limited to accessories, such as ‘Stop Adani’ earrings, or t-shirts sold for fundraising and promotional purposes. Indeed, t-shirts appeared to be the most promoted clothing item in the dataset, continuing a long tradition of their use in protests (e.g. Maynard, Blankets). Easy to create, suitable for displaying both text and imagery, t-shirts sharing anti-coal messages featured predominantly in the Stop Adani campaign, while yellow t-shirts were a common item in Knitting Nanna’s anti-coal seam gas mining protests. Fig. 2: Stop Adani earrings and t-shirts; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). The Role of Fashion in Environmental Activism As these findings demonstrate, fashion appears to be deliberately utilised in environmental activism primarily through street theatre and the promotion of sustainable fashion practices. While fewer examples of fashion in disruptive protest were found and no consistent fashion assemblage was identified, accessories and t-shirts were utilised by many groups. What may activists be seeking to achieve through incorporating fashion via street theatre and sustainable fashion practices? Some scholars have argued that incorporating fashion into protest allows activists to signal political dissent against authoritarian control. For example, Yanzoom noted that by utilising fashion as a means of communication, Tibetan activists were able to embody their political goals despite repression of speech and movement by political powerholders. However, a consistent fashion repertoire across protests in this Australian dataset was not found. The opportunities afforded by protected protest rights in Australia and absence of violent police repression of disruptive protests may be one explanation why distinctive dress such as the masks and black attire of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters did not manifest in the dataset. Other scholars have observed that fashion sub-cultures also developed partly to express anti-establishment politics, such as the punk movement in the 1970s. Radical clothing accessorised by symbols, bright hair colours, body piercings, and heavy-duty books signalled opposition to the dominant political ideology (Craik). However, none of these purposes appeared to play a role in Australian environmental activism either. Instead, it appears that Maynard’s contention that Australian protest fashion barely deviates from everyday dress remains true today. Fashion within the events promoted in this large empirical dataset retained the ‘prevalence of everyday clothing’ (Maynard, Dress 111). The lack of a clearly discernible single protest fashion style within the dataset may be related to the shortcomings of the sender/receiver model of fashion communication. As Barnard (Fashion Statements) argued, fashion is not always used as a vehicle for conveying messages, but also as a platform for constructing and reproducing identity. Indeed, a multiplicity of researchers have noted how fashion acts as a signal of what social groups individuals belong to (see Roach-Higgins and Eicher). Activist groups have a variety of goals, which not only include promoting environmental change but also mobilising more people to join their cause (Gulliver et al., Understanding). Stereotyping can hinder achievement of these goals. It has been demonstrated, for example, that individuals who hold negative stereotypes of ‘typical’ activists are less likely to want to associate with them, and less likely to adopt their behaviours (Bashir et al.). Accordingly, some activist groups have been shown to actively promote dress associated with other identity groups, specifically to challenge cultural constructions of environmental activist stereotypes (see also Roces). For example, Bloomfield and Doolins’s study of the NZ anti-GE group MAdGE (Mothers against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment) demonstrated how visual protest artifacts conveyed the protesters’ social identity as mothers and customers rather than environmental activists, claiming an alternative cultural mandate for challenging the authority of science (see also Einwohner et al.). The data suggest that Australian activists are seeking to avoid this stereotype as well. The absence of a consistent fashion promoted within the dataset may reflect awareness of problematic stereotypes that activists may be then deliberately seeking to avoid. Maynard (Dress), for example, has noted how the everyday dress of Australian protesters serves to deflect stereotypical labelling of participants. This strategy is also mirrored by the changing nature of groups within the Australian environmental movement. The event database demonstrates that an increasing number of environmental groups are emerging with names highlighting non-stereotypical environmental identities: groups such as ‘Engineers Declare’ and ‘Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action’. Beyond these identity processes, the frequent use of costumed street theatre protest suggests that activists recognise the value of using fashion as a vehicle for communicating messages, despite the challenges of interpretation described above. Much of the language used to promote street theatre in the Facebook event listings suggests that these costumes were deliberately designed to signify a particular meaning, with individuals encouraged to dress up to be ‘a vehicle for myth and symbol’ (Lavender 11). It may be that costumes are also utilised in protest due to their suitability as an image event, convenient for dissemination by mass media seeking colourful and engaging imagery (Delicath and Deluca; Doerr). Furthermore, costumes, as with text or colours presented on t-shirts, may offer activists an avenue to clearly convey a visual message which is more resistant to stereotyping. This is especially relevant given that fashion can be re-interpreted and misinterpreted by audiences, as well as reframed and reinterpreted by the media (Maynard, Dress). While the prevalence of costumed performance and infrequent mentions of fashion in the dataset may be explained by stereotype avoidance and messaging clarity, sustainable fashion practices were more straightforward in intent. Groups used multiple approaches to educate audiences about sustainable fashion, whether through fostering sustainable fashion practices or raising awareness of fashion industry problems. In this regard, fashion in protest in Australia closely resembles Asian sustainable fashion activism (see e.g. Chon et al. regarding the Singaporean context). In particular, the large number of ‘crafternoons’ suggests their importance as sites of activism and community building. Craftivism – acts such as quilting banners, yarn bombing, and cross stitching feminist slogans – are used by many groups to draw attention to social, political and environmental issues (McGovern and Barnes). This type of ‘creative activism’ (Filippello) has been used to challenge aesthetic and political norms across a variety of contested socio-political landscapes. These activities not only develop activism skills, but also foster community (Barry and Drak). For environmental groups, these community building events can play a critical role in sustaining and supporting ongoing environmental activism (Gulliver et al., Understanding) as well as demonstrating solidarity with workers across Asia experiencing labour injustices linked to the fashion industry (Chung and Yim). Conclusion Studies examining protest fashion demonstrate that clothing provides a canvas for sharing protest messages and identities in both Asia and Australia (Benda; Yangzom; Craik). However, despite the fashion’s utility as communication tool for social and environmental movements, empirical studies of how fashion is used by activists in these contexts remain rare. This analysis demonstrates that Australian environmental activists use fashion in their action repertoire primarily through costumed street theatre performances and promoting sustainable fashion practices. By doing so they may be seeking to use fashion as a means of conveying messages, while avoiding stereotypes that can demobilise supporters and reduce support for their cause. Furthermore, sustainable fashion activism offers opportunities for activists to achieve multiple goals: to subvert the fast fashion industry, to provide participation avenues for new activists, to help build activist communities, and to express solidarity with those experiencing fast fashion-related labour injustices. These findings suggest that the use of fashion in protest actions can move beyond identity messaging to also enact sustainable practices while co-opting and resisting hegemonic ideas of consumerism. By integrating fashion into the vibrant and diverse actions promoted by environmental movements across Australia and Asia, activists can construct and perform identities while fostering the community bonds and networks from which movements demanding environmental change derive their strength. Ethics Approval Statement This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Queensland (2018000963). 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Cultural Studies has tended to prioritise the domain of leisure and consumption over work as an area for meaning making, in many ways defining everyday life in opposition to work. Greg Noble, a cultural researcher who examined work in the context of the early computerisation of Australian universities made the point that "discussions of everyday life often make the mistake of assuming that everyday life equates with home and family life, or leisure" (87). This article argues for the need within Cultural Studies to focus on work and media as a research area of everyday life. With the growth of flexible and creative labour and the widespread uptake of an array of new media technologies used for work, traditional ways to identify and measure the space and time of work have become increasingly flawed, with implications for how we account for work and negotiate its boundaries. New approaches are needed to address the complex media environments and technological practices that are an increasing part of contemporary working life. Cultural Studies can make a significant impact towards this research agenda by offering new ways to analyse the complex interrelations of space, time and technology in everyday work practice. To further this goal, a new material practices account of work termed Officing is introduced, developed through my doctoral research on professionals' daily use of information and communication technology (ICT). This approach builds on the key cultural concepts of "bricolage" and "appropriation" combined with the idea of "articulation work" proposed by Anselm Strauss, to support the analysis of the office workplace as a contingent and provisional arrangement or process. Officing has a number of benefits as a framework for analysing the nature of work in a highly mediated world. Highlighting the labour that goes into stabilising work platforms makes it possible to assess the claims of productivity and improved work-life balance brought about by new mobile media technologies; to identify previously unidentified sources of time pressure, overwork and intensification and ultimately, to contribute to the design of more sustainable work environments. The Turn Away from Work Work held a central position in social and cultural analysis in the first half of the twentieth century but as Strangleman observed, there was a marked shift away from the study of work from the mid 1970s (3.1). Much of the impulse for this shift came from critiques of the over-emphasis on relations of production and the workplace as the main source of meaning and value (5.1). In line with this position, feminist researchers challenged the traditional division of labour into paid and unpaid work, arguing that this division sustained the false perception of domestic work as non-productive (cf. Delphy; Folbre). Accompanying these critiques were significant changes in work itself, as traditional jobs literally began to disappear with the decline of manufacturing in industrialised countries (6.1). With the turn away from work in academia and the changes in the nature of work, attention shifted to the realm of the market and consumption. One of the important contributions of Cultural Studies has been the focus on the role of the consumer in driving social and technological change and processes of identity formation. Yet, it is a major problem that work is largely marginalised in cultural research of everyday life, especially since, in most industrialised nations, we are working in new ways, in rapidly changing conditions and more than ever before. Research shows that in Australia there has been a steady increase in the average hours of paid work and Australians are working harder (cf. Watson, Buchanan, Campbell and Briggs; Edwards and Wajcman). In the 2008 Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) Skinner and Pocock found around 55 per cent of employees frequently felt rushed or pressed for time and this was associated with long working hours, work overload and an overall poor work–life interaction (8). These trends have coincided with long-term changes in the type and location of work. In Australia, like many other developed countries, information-based occupations have taken over manufacturing jobs and there has been an increase in part-time and casual work (cf. Watson et al.). Many employees now conduct work outside of the traditional workplace, with the ABS reporting that in 2008, 24 per cent of employees worked at least some hours at home. Many social analysts have explained the rise of casual and flexible labour as related to the transition to global capitalism driven by the expansion of networked information processes (cf. Castells; Van Dijk). This shift is not simply that more workers are producing ideas and information but that the previously separated spheres of production and consumption have blurred (cf. Ritzer and Jurgenson). With this, entirely new industries have sprung up, predicated on the often unpaid for creative labour of individuals, including users of media technologies. A growing chorus of writers are now pointing out that a fragmented, polarised and complex picture is emerging of this so-called "new economy", with significant implications for the quality of work (cf. Edwards and Wajcman; Fudge and Owens; Huws). Indeed, some claim that new conditions of insecure and poor quality employment or "precarious work" are fast becoming the norm. Moreover, this longer-term pattern runs parallel to the production of a multitude of new mobile media technologies, first taken up by professionals and then by the mainstream, challenging the notion that activities are bound to any particular place or time. Reinvigorating Work in Social and Cultural Analysis There are moves to reposition social and cultural analysis to respond to these various trends. Work-life balance is an example of a research and policy area that has emerged since the 1990s. The boundary between the household and the outside world has also been subject to scrutiny by cultural researchers, and these critically examine the intersection between work and consumption, gender and care (cf. Nippert-Eng; Sorenson and Lie; Noble and Lupton, "Consuming" and "Mine"; Lally). These responses are examples of a shift away from what Urry has dubbed "structures and stable organisations" to a concern with flows, movements and the blurring of boundaries between life spheres (5). In a similar vein, researchers recently have proposed alternative ways to describe the changing times and places of employment. In their study of UK professionals, Felstead, Jewson and Walters proposed a model of "plural workscapes" to explain a major shift in the spatial organisation of work (23). Mobility theorists Sheller and Urry have called for the need to "develop a more dynamic conceptualisation of the fluidities and mobilities that have increasingly hybridised the public and private" (113). All of this literature has reinforced a growing concern that in the face of new patterns of production and consumption and with the rise of complex media environments, traditional models and measures of space and time are inadequate to account for contemporary work. Analyses that rely on conventional measures of work based on hourly units clearly point to an increase in the volume of work, the speed of work and to the collision (cf. Pocock) of work and life but fall down in accounting for the complex and often contradictory role of technology. Media technologies are "Janus-faced" as Michael Arnold has suggested, referring to the two-faced Roman god to foreground the contradictory effects at the centre of all technologies (232). Wajcman notes this paradox in her research on mobile media and time, pointing out that mobile phones are just as likely to "save" time as to "consume" it (15). It was precisely this problematic of the complex interactions of the space, time and technology of work that was at stake in my research on the daily use of ICT by professional workers. In the context of changes to the location, activity and meaning of work, and with the multiplying array of old and new media technologies used by workers, how can the boundary and scope of work be determined? What are the implications of these shifting grounds for the experience and quality of work? Officing: A Material Practices Account of Office Work In the remaining article I introduce some of the key ideas and principles of a material practices account developed in my PhD, Officing: Professionals' Daily ICT Use and the Changing Space and Time of Work. This research took place between 2006 and 2007 focusing in-depth on the daily technology practices of twenty professional workers in a municipal council in Sydney and a unit of a global telecommunication company taking part in a trial of a new smart phone. Officing builds on efforts to develop a more accurate account of the space and time of work bringing into play the complex and highly mediated environment in which work takes place. It extends more recent practice-based, actor-network and cultural approaches that have, for some time, been moving towards a more co-constitutive and process-oriented approach to media and technology in society. Turning first to "bricolage" from the French bricole meaning something small and handmade, bricolage refers to the ways that individuals and groups borrow from existing cultural forms and meanings to create new uses, meanings and identities. Initially proposed by Levi-Strauss and then taken up by de Certeau, bricolage has been a useful concept within subculture and lifestyle studies to reveal the creative work performed on signs and meaning systems in forming cultural identities (cf. O'Sullivan et al.). Bricolage is also an important concept for understanding how meanings and uses are inscribed into forms in use rather than being read or activated off their design. This is the process of appropriation, through which both the object and the person are mutually shaped and users gain a sense of control and ownership (cf. Noble and Lupton; Lally; Silverstone and Haddon). The concept of bricolage highlights the improvisational qualities of appropriation and its status as work. A bricoleur is thus a person who constructs new meanings and forms by drawing on and assembling a wide range of resources at hand, sourced from multiple spheres of life. One of the problems with how bricolage and appropriation has been applied to date, notwithstanding the priority given to the domestic sphere, is the tendency to grant individuals and collectives too much control to stabilise the meanings and purposes of technologies. This problem is evident in the research drawing on the framework of "domestication" (cf. Silverstone and Haddon). In practice, the sheer volume of technologically-related issues encountered on a daily basis and the accompanying sense of frustration indicates there is no inevitable drift towards stability, nor are problems merely aberrational or trivial. Instead, daily limits to agency and attempts to overcome these are points at which meanings as well as uses are re-articulated and potentially re-invented. This is where "articulation work" comes in. Initially put forward by Anselm Strauss in 1985, articulation work has become an established analytical tool for informing technology design processes in such fields as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Workplace Studies. In these, articulation work is narrowly defined to refer to the real time activities of cooperative work. It includes dealing with contingencies, keeping technologies and systems working and making adjustments to accommodate for problems (Suchman "Supporting", 407). In combination with naturalistic investigations, this concept has facilitated engagement with the increasingly complex technological and media environments of work. It has been a powerful tool for highlighting practices deemed unimportant but which are nevertheless crucial for getting work done. Articulation work, however, has the potential to be applied in a broader sense to explain the significance of the instability of technologies and the efforts to overcome these as transformative in themselves, part of the ongoing process of appropriation that goes well beyond individual tasks or technologies. With clear correspondences to actor-network theory, this expanded definition provides the basis for a new understanding of the office as a temporary and provisional condition of stability achieved through the daily creative and improvisational activities of workers. The office, then, is dependent on and inextricably bound up in its ongoing articulation and crucially, is not bound to a particular place or time. In the context of the large-scale transformations in work already discussed, this expanded definition of articulation work helps to; firstly, address how work is re-organised and re-rationalised through changes to the material conditions of work; secondly, identify the ongoing articulations that this entails and thirdly; understand the role of these articulations in the construction of the space and time of work. This expanded definition is achieved in the newly developed concept of officing. Officing describes a form of labour directed towards the production of a stable office platform. Significantly, one of the main characteristics of this work is that it often goes undetected by organisations as well as by the workers that perform it. As explained later, its "invisibility" is in part a function of its embodiment but also relates to the boundless nature of officing, taking place both inside and outside the workplace, in or out of work time. Officing is made up of a set of interwoven activities of three main types: connecting, synchronising and configuring. Connecting can be understood as aligning technical and social relations for the performance of work at a set time. Synchronising brings together and coordinates different times and temporal demands, for example, the time of "work" with "life" or the time "out in the field" with time "in the workplace". Configuring prepares the space of work, making a single technology or media environment work to some planned action or existing pattern of activity. To give an example of connecting: in the Citizens' Service Centre of the Council, Danielle's morning rituals involved a series of connections even before her work of advising customers begins: My day: get in, sit down, turn on the computer and then slowly open each software program that I will need to use…turn on the phone, key in my password, turn on the headphones and sit there and wait for the calls! (Humphry Officing, 123) These connections not only set up and initiate the performance of work but also mark Danielle's presence in her office. Through these activities, which in practice overlap and blur, the space and time of the office comes to appear as a somewhat separate and mostly invisible structure or infrastructure. The work that goes into making the office stable takes place around the boundary of work with implications for how this boundary is constituted. These efforts do not cluster around boundaries in any simple sense but become part of the process of boundary making, contributing to the construction of categories such as "work" and "life". So, for example, for staff in the smart phone trial, the phone had become their main source of information and communication. Turning their smart phone off, or losing connectivity had ramifications that cascaded throughout their lifeworld. On the one hand, this lead to the breakdown of the distinction between "work" and "life" and a sense of "ever-presence", requiring constant and vigilant "boundary work" (cf. Nippert-Eng). On the other hand, this same state also enabled workers to respond to demands in their own time and across multiple boundaries, giving workers a sense of flexibility, control and of being "in sync". Connecting, configuring and synchronising are activities performed by bodies, producing an embodied transformation. In the tradition of phenomenology, most notably in the works of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and more recently Ihde, embodiment is used to explain the relationship between subjects and objects. This concept has since been developed to be understood as not residing in the body but as spread through social, material and discursive arrangements (cf. Haraway, "Situated" and Simians; Henke; Suchman, "Figuring"). Tracing efforts towards making the office stable is thus a way of uncovering how the body, as a constitutive part of a larger arrangement or network, is formed through embodiment, how it gains its competencies, social meanings and ultimately, how workers gain a sense of what it means to be a professional. So, in the smart phone trial, staff managed their connections by replying immediately to their voice, text and data messages. This immediacy not only acted as proof of their presence in the office. It also signalled their commitment to their office: their active participation and value to the organisation and their readiness to perform when called on. Importantly, this embodied transformation also helps to explain how officing becomes an example of "invisible work" (cf. Star and Strauss). Acts of connecting, synchronising and configuring become constituted and forgotten in and through bodies, spaces and times. Through their repeated performance these acts become habits, a transparent means through which the environment of work is navigated in the form of skills and techniques, configurations and routines. In conclusion, researching work in contemporary societies means confronting its marginalisation within cultural research and developing ways to comprehend and measure the interaction of space, time and the ever-multiplying array of media technologies. Officing provides a way to do this by shifting to an understanding of the workplace as a contingent product of work itself. The strength of this approach is that it highlights the creative and ongoing work of individuals on their media infrastructures. It also helps to identify and describe work activities that are not neatly contained in a workplace, thus adding to their invisibility. The invisibility of these practices can have significant impacts on workers: magnifying feelings of time pressure and a need to work faster, longer and harder even as discrete technologies are utilised to save time. In this way, officing exposes some of the additional contributions to the changing experience and quality of work as well as to the construction of everyday domains. Officing supports an evaluation of claims of productivity and work-life balance in relation to new media technologies. In the smart phone trial, contrary to an assumed increase in productivity, mobility of work was achieved at the expense of productivity. Making the mobile office stable—getting it up and running, keeping it working in changing environments and meeting expectations of speed and connectivity—took up time, resulting in an overall productivity loss and demanding more "boundary work". In spite of their adaptability and flexibility, staff tended to overwork to counteract this loss. This represented a major shift in the burden of effort in the production of office forms away from the organisation and towards the individual. Finally, though not addressed here in any detail, officing could conceivably have practical uses for designing more sustainable office environments that better support the work process and the balance of work and life. Thus, by accounting more accurately for the resource requirements of work, organisations can reduce the daily effort, space and time taken up by employees on their work environments. In any case, what is clear, is the ongoing need to continue a cultural research agenda on work—to address the connections between transformations in work and the myriad material practices that individuals perform in going about their daily work. References Arnold, Michael. "On the Phenomenology of Technology: The 'Janus-Faces' of Mobile Phones." Information and Organization 13.4 (2003): 231–56. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 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Being is an empty fiction. The “apparent” world is the only world: the “true world” is just a lie added on to it… —Nietzsche. Anna Poletti: I’m attracted to autobiography in a non-narrative context because I’m very interested in texts that people create that demonstrate their thinking or their fantasies or their processing, generally.Lauren Berlant: Right, in that sense it’s autobiography in your larger sense of what autobiography is: a record of […] processing. —Anna Poletti and Julie Rak with Lauren Berlant. The medium is the message. —Marshall McLuhanWelcome to the M/C Journal issue on automediality. If “automediality” sounds like another academic buzzword to you, you are right. But it is more than a buzzword for scholars interested in exploring the significant role of mediation in auto/biographical engagement. Automediality is, we think, an incredibly useful way of framing and grouping scholarly investigations of the processes and practices that people engage when they mediate their lives and selves in a range of auto/biographical forms.We are incredibly excited to bring you this vibrant collection of research about what we are calling “automediality,” but first it is useful to lay some groundwork in terms of explicitly articulating what we think automediality is and does, and why we think it is necessary.As life writing scholars exploring contemporary examples of digital auto/biography in our own research, we were both struck by the need for a new definition of auto/biography that expands beyond text, beyond narrative, beyond subject in any complete sense or form, to reflect the multiplicity of ways that lives are lived and recorded using new media today. We each found ourselves limited, at times, by existing assumptions about what auto/biography traditionally is. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, in their field defining work Reading Autobiography, offer an etymological cue that summarises the prevailing use and perception of autobiographical work: “in Greek, autos denotes ‘self,’ bios ‘life,’ and graphe ‘writing.’ Taken together in this order, the words self life writing offer a brief definition of the autobiography” (1).If “autobiography” has denoted a way to write the self from the location of the self, automediality points to the range of media forms and technologies through which people engage in digital, visual, filmic, performative, textual, and transmediated forms of documenting, constructing and presenting the self. Smith and Watson introduce automediality as a possible theoretical framework for “approaching life storytelling in diverse visual and digital media” (Reading 168). Originally developed by European scholars such as Jörg Dünne and Christian Moser, the term was introduced in order “to expand the definition of how subjectivity is constructed in writing, image, or new media” (Smith and Watson Reading 168).Conjoining autos and media, the concept redresses a tendency in autobiography studies to consider media as “tools” for rendering a pre-existent self. Theorists of automediality emphasize that the choice of medium is determined by self-expression; and the materiality of the medium is constitutive of the subjectivity rendered. Thus media technologies do not simplify or undermine the interiority of the subject but, on the contrary, expand the field of self-representation beyond the literary to cultural and media practices. New media of the self revise notions of identity and the rhetoric and modalities of self-presentation, and they prompt new imaginings of virtual sociality enabled by concepts of community that do not depend on personal encounter. (Reading 168)Looking at auto/biographical practices from a framework of automediality moves away from a conception of texts as able to capture and transmit preexisting selves, lives and identities, and towards an understanding of selves, lives and identities as constructed by and through textual and media practices. It is through creating an autobiographical text that the “self” a person thinks they are comes into being. The mode of creation here, be it a Facebook status update, a memoir, or an alt account, for example, is situated within networks of power, meaning and social capital to shape ways of being a “self” in a particular environment or context. Automedial reading takes all of these formative elements into consideration.Julie Rak suggests that automedia “describes the enactment of a life story in a new media environment” (155), but we think that the term is even more useful as a framework or approach to studying not only new media life stories, but auto/biographical practices as they are enacted in a range of media forms, analogue and digital alike. Importantly, our aim here is not simply to introduce another buzzword, but rather to draw attention to the current need to rethink the significant role of mediation in auto/biographical production, performance, and practices. As Rak points out, “it is time not only to rename the practices we study, but also to think critically about online life as life, and not as the texts many of us are more used to studying, which are meant to represent a life” (156). This kind of critical rethinking about how media is embedded in the living of lives, and the scholarly shift that Rak suggests from examining representation in texts to examining “online life as life” is crucial to the notion of automediality. And it has us—the editors of this issue—divided. A Conversation between EditorsÜmit: choosing “subject” and “process” over “text.”I think what automediality is, which is different to auto/biography, is process rather than product. Automediality allows us to explore how our lives intertwine with different mediums and technologies resulting in new subjects, but subjects in motion. There is no product, there is no complete narrative, there is no snapshot that captures the subject. The subject is always developing, always in motion, always in the “process of doing” (Rak 156), of being and becoming. It is a “moving target” as Smith and Watson suggest (“Virtually” 71). And therefore, automediality, as Rak suggests, is the process of living: living in relationship with media. Where as an autobiographical enquiry has usually (not always) involved the study of a subject in a complete form (although susceptible to other “versions”)—a text in other words, which can be examined by itself—an automedial enquiry has to adapt to the fact that there isn’t a product that can be examined in isolation. As Emma has argued elsewhere, we can never hold “a single cohesive version” of automedial subjects in our hands and we never reach “the end” of a subject’s self-representation as long as they continue to “post” (“Self-Branding” 75). What we are exploring as scholars of automediality is a process of living. How people live, create and present themselves, participate, narrativise, and simply “be” in different spaces, using different mediums and technologies. The mediated lives and subjects that we’re exploring in this issue require new language, new words and definitions. We are not dealing with “texts,” although there are textual components, we are not dealing with “narratives,” although one (or many) is (or are) always in formation (see Rak 156), and most importantly, we are not dealing with “products,” that hold any significance in isolation. What we are dealing with are processes: processes of being, doing, creating, and distributing the self, in relationship with media and their affordances, limitations and participants. My objection to language such as “text” is that it implies something tangible, taking for granted the ephemerality of the subjects of automediality. So often in my research I have taken a “snapshot” of a subject (in the form of a YouTube video, for example) and treated it like a text ready for analysis only to find when I revisit it that it has changed, been edited or contradicted, or completely erased (see Kennedy). And when we treat “snapshots” as “texts” for analysis I think we miss the most important point: that is the process through which the subject was and is being formed (in relationship with the medium, its technologies, and the people and things that congregate and participate in that space). We need to expand the way we explore mediated subjects and lives and “automediality” allows us to do this—it gives us a “space” in which to develop new language and methods of enquiry.Emma: texts are vital to studying automediality.Elsewhere, I have suggested that textuality is key to a definition of automediality: “The aim of an automedial approach is to discover what texts can tell us about cultural understandings of selfhood and what it means to portray ‘real’ life and ‘real’ selves through media. The emphasis is on thinking critically about mediation” (Girls, 22). However, Ümit’s thinking about automedia as process has been instrumental to progressing how I am defining and thinking about automediality. For me, though, (and perhaps my background in literary studies is showing here), framing autobiographical production and performance as texts that we can read is a useful framework that allows us to disentangle and examine abstract, slippery concepts like being, living, identity, and selfhood in process in a way that brings the roles and effects of mediation into sharp focus.Retaining the terminology around texts and textual practices—specifically that branch that is concerned with cultural production—also means that we can observe the labour of auto/biography, which is important for thinking about the economies in which automediation occurs as well as acknowledging the work that goes into creating these self-presentations or performances. It takes skills, labour, literacies, and—for me—nuanced understanding and facility with crucial modalities of reading to participate and "play" in any kind of media form. My definition of reading is broad: people read meaning, identities, lives, media, and the world around them in order to figure out how they fit into any given context, and it is the texts produced in even the most fleeting or participatory automediation that record or hold traces of this work, this process, that we as scholars can then examine.The spirit in which I apply “text” is deeply influenced by the field of semiotics within Cultural Studies. The work of semioticians like Saussure, Althusser, Derrida and Lotman that I studied during my undergraduate degree leads me, like many literary scholars, to think about not only cultural products like books and media as texts, but also bodies, surfaces, ephemeral and immaterial performances, and a range of autobiographical practices as texts. As agents we create meaning by reading, decoding, interpreting, and negotiating texts. The work of mediation, for me, is deeply connected to textual practices.I still think that texts—as well as the practices and processes that go into creating, distributing, and reading them—are a productive framework for examining strategies of self-presentation and identity performance. However, Ümit’s observations around process (articulated in her short essay “Vulnerability” and developed here) is particularly vital to thinking about the context for the participation of produsers in media economies where automedial production is often fleeting, ephemeral, and in flux. And I think that the importance of process in analysing more (apparently or materially) stable media is important, too. One way of thinking about a middle ground between text and subject is by considering the concept of becoming as central to the conceptual framework of automediality. Ümit: finding a middle ground.I agree our difference of opinion about viewing these subjects as texts comes from our different disciplines. For you, Emma, the word “text” is important because it emphasises the agency and labour involved in its creation. As a communications and media scholar, I operate on the assumption that communicating the self involves a huge amount of conscious and unconscious work. I take the agency and labour involved in mediating the self for granted. I still have an issue with “text,” however, as taking the process through which it was created for granted. I do concede, though, that we can’t completely disregard the products of mediation, because there are products (as long as we agree that they are in motion), and these are worthy of study.Although mediated subjects and texts can be fleeting and ephemeral, the fact that they are mediated, as you suggest, means that to some extent they are traceable. The mediation of the self means we can see and track its progression, its influencers, its forms, its relationships and dialogues. Although it is changeable and deletable, “doing” (living in relationship with media) leaves a record. On YouTube, for example, I can see the interactions that take place, through comments, likes and subscriptions, and I can therefore trace the subject as it changes. Mediating the self in this way materialises the process of self-formation. Automediality illuminates the process and makes it accessible to us to research. I think the concept of becoming is a perfect middle ground. “Becoming” as a Middle GroundWe are interested in using the concept of automediality to unpack and examine how selves and lives are brought into being through media forms by examining, simultaneously, both the process of mediation and the product (i.e. the autobiographical subjects and text). A crucial part of this examination is attending to the process of construction, of the process through which the textual self is mediated. One way of thinking about this in relation to the construction of lives and selves, is by thinking about how the concept of becoming is traceable in mediation.Rob Cover’s discussion of becoming in social networking is influential to our thinking here. Cover, drawing on Judith Butler, explains that underlying his approach is “the idea that identity and subjectivity is an ongoing process of becoming, rather than an ontological state of being” (56) and he argues that looking at the practices and artifacts of online identity performance can reveal the intricacies of identity in process. Also important here is the work of Stuart Hall who, in 1989, wrote about becoming in terms of how it is implicated in identity as a cultural practice or process:Cultural identity […] is a matter of 'becoming' as well as of 'being'. […] It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant trans-formation. Far from being eternally fixed […], they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in a mere 'recovery' of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narrative of the past. (70)Hall’s description of becoming as the process by which identity is continually brought into being has parallels to how we are thinking of mediation and life narrative in this issue. Hall is speaking about reading and representing identity, about the processes and products through which people enact, express, perform, and consume identity categories. Similarly, we are looking at subjectivities and identities in process, and we both agree that automediality as a conceptual tool and classifying label turns our attention to the ways in which people identify themselves and others using media. Media use, here, encompasses practices of engagement in terms of both consumption and creation. And, increasingly, users participate by engaging in both production and consumption simultaneously, becoming produsers—a term coined by the editor of this journal, Axel Bruns (2). Bruns’s notion of produsers illustrates the complex relationship between consumers, producers and users in the current media economy (2). One of the significant aspects of an automedial enquiry is the blurring of boundaries between creators and consumers. Automedial subjects are created in dialogue with the other participants in the space. The lives and identities are not only merged with the medium and technologies involved in their creation, but also with the other produsers in the space. This is critical when we begin to explore how to research automediality, as an automedial enquiry demands automediation of the researcher. In order to explore these subjects, the researcher must participate, to some extent, in the practice. Exploring subjects on social media, for example, requires the researcher to create an account and therefore participate in the same activity they are observing/consuming/researching.Questions for Automedial EnquiryTaking these ideas from theory to practice, from our point of view, reading auto/biographical texts and practices through a framework of automediality involves asking some of the following questions and paying attention to some of the following elements:What are the affordances, constraints and features of this medium that have shaped how a subject can inscribe, perform, or construct a self-presentation? As Nancy Baym writes, “our ability to construct an online self-presentation ... is limited and enabled by the communicative tools, or affordances, a platform makes available and our skills at strategically managing them” (124).What networks of power traverse this technology, this medium, and thus this mode of self-presentation?How does this performance of selfhood engage the different autobiographical “I”s: the narrating self and the narrated self; the subject and its creator; the online self and the offline IRL (in real life) self or selves. Although, as Smith and Watson state, “theorists of media and autobiography […] approach the constructed self not as an essence but as a subject” (Reading, 71), we have to acknowledge the person or constructs that exist outside of (and informs) the performance. How do these different facets of the self, and identities, speak to each other in automedia? In what networks of production and consumption does the automedia exist? How is the audience positioned in relation to the text or subject?Surface reading: the textual elements that form the interface between reader and story can tell us about what forces are shaping the self-presentations within the text, and also how the reader is positioned in relation to the autobiographical narrative. What does a surface reading reveal about how the self is being constructed by both media conventions and cultural meanings? The possibility of multiple and fragmented selves. The self that a subject performs or creates in one media platform may be a very different self that they perform in another or that they feel themselves to “be” in “real” life. What is the relationship between these selves? How do they inform and speak to each other?Authenticity is always suspect. Rather than a concrete guarantee that the media presentation correlates truthfully or sincerely to the IRL (in real life) identity or life of the narrator, authenticity in automedia is “an effect created by the form and style” of an auto/biographical performance (Maguire Girls, 11; drawing on Poletti Intimate, 28-9; emphasis added). Thus, it is less useful to weigh up how authentic or how real a particular self-presentation or media form is, and more interesting to examine how particular media constructs or creates effects of authenticity, or makes appeals to truth/authenticity. And finally, method: How can we develop methods to explore automedia which critically examine the text/subject, as well as the “process of doing” (Rak) through which the text/subject is being and “becoming” (Hall). Introducing the ArticlesEach of these excellent articles responds to technological effects on selfhood. By canvassing a range of media forms and approaches to conceptualising the mediation of lives and selves, our contributors’ ideas probe new directions for automediality as a framework for reading and thinking through self-mediation.The feature article, authored by Anna Poletti and Julie Rak, proposes that RuPaul’s Drag Race demonstrates automedia in action and suggests that the reality TV show, by modelling “queer time,” presents a challenge to dominant (straight) patterns of temporality in life narratives. This piece presents an argument for considering how identities that have been positioned as marginal are able, through automediality, to reconfigure understandings of what a life and a self can look like.Wes Hill addresses a key claim that we are making when we talk about autmediality: that media interfaces and contexts shape and construct the forms of selfhood that are brought into being through them. Hill takes the case study of artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin and argues that Trecartin’s videos demonstrate a fragmented set of identities that are deeply constituted by a style of performance that Hill calls “Internet-era camp.” Here, Internet-era camp becomes a mode through which to constitute the self through fragmented sets of intertextual and affective meanings. Emily van der Nagel highlights the multi-faceted nature of the mediated self through her investigation of Alt (alternative) accounts on Twitter. Her article demonstrates the way people use different accounts on the same platform for different facets of the self, and for different audiences. Isabel Pederson and Kristen Aspevig extend our discussion of automediality to explore agency and consent in the example of children producing their own automedial subjects and texts on YouTube, in the form of toy reviews. Kylie Cardell explores the digital self-tracking device many of us wear on our wrists, the Fitbit, and asks whether this wearable technology constitutes a diary. In her article, Cardell examines how a Fitbit can become an almanac for self-improvement, where the constant tracking of our physical behaviour changes the way that we live.Anu A Harju critically examines the world of “fatshion” blogging to reveal the relational way “fatshionistas” are formed in dialogue with medium, community and market. Harju situates the self as a product of relations, “borne out of them as well as dependent on them.” Chad Habel takes up masculine gender performance in video games by investigating how genre facilitates (or doesn’t) particular modes of identification by coaxing aggressive gameplay.Mick Broderick, Stuart Marshall Bender and Tony McHugh take a look how artificial intelligence technologies are currently being used to create immersive virtual reality experiences. They question the use of trauma in such projects, and suggest that affect—particularly when used to explore suffering within virtual worlds—needs careful thought moving forward with these technologies.ConclusionThis collection of interdisciplinary scholarship is an exploration of the different ways that people mediate the self. Focusing on mediation as a process that brings the subject into being, these essays explore the connections between lives, selves, identities and media technologies. The textual constructs that hold selves together become traces or products that can perform social functions, but they also have immense richness as objects of study. By taking apart and examining the processes and effects of mediation on life narratives, as scholars we are able to re-focus the microscope on the becoming of lives, selves and identities that are constructed in autobiographical texts. In seeking contributions for this collection, we were guided by two key questions: How do people mediate their identities, selves and experiences? How do media forms and conventions limit or facilitate the possibilities for particular kinds of selfhood to be articulated? Scholars of life narrative warn us that “the self” is not a unified and pre-existing entity that can simply be transcribed or translated through media. Rather, the self is brought into being through writing—or mediation. Media technologies like the camera, the diary, social media platforms, and books each have conventions, affordances, abilities and limits that both enable and restrict the kinds of self-presentation that are possible. Particular media bring particular subjectivities to life. It is our opinion that examining such sites and modes of automediality can tell us about the ways in which “technologies and subjectivity” are connected (Smith and Watson “Virtually” 77), and this is what we hope this collection of work offers to scholars of media and life narrative, as well as those working in interrelated fields. But this is only the beginning. The interfaces between life narrative and media technologies remains an exciting space for new ideas and theories to flourish.Future avenues for investigation of automediality might include examining: the platforms, mediums and technologies of automediality; the affordances of automediality for alternative narratives and identities; the vulnerabilities of mediated narratives and identities; the mediated self as brand/consumable product; cases that explore when automediality is lasting and permanent and when it is ephemeral and shifting; and multiple methodologies for investigating the mediated self, particularly in the context of digital media. An upcoming development that we’re particularly excited about is Anna Poletti’s forthcoming monograph Biomediations which will, we expect, move this thinking forward again.We hope that this issue of M/C Journal inspires more ideas about how media shapes the kinds of selves we think we are, now, in the past, and into the future. ReferencesBaym, Nancy K. Personal Connections in the Digital Age. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Polity, 2015. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.Cover, Rob. “Becoming and Belonging: Performativity, Subjectivity, and the Cultural Purposes of Social Networking.” Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Eds. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 55-69.Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 36 (1989): 68-81.Kennedy, Ümit. “The Vulnerability of Contemporary Digital Autobiography.” a/b Auto/Biography Studies 32.2 (2017): 409-11.Maguire, Emma. Girls, Autobiography, Media: Gender and Self-Meditation in Digital Economies. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.———. “Self-Branding, Hotness, and Girlhood in the Video Blogs of Jenna Marbles.” Biography 38.1 (2015): 72-86.Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. “Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer.” The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Eds. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Trans. Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. 153-230.Poletti, Anna. Biomediations. New York: New York UP, forthcoming 2019.———. Intimate Ephemera: Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne UP, 2008.Poletti, Anna, and Julie Rak. “The Blog as Experimental Setting: An Interview with Lauren Berlant.” Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Eds. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 259-72.Rak, Julie. “Life Writing versus Automedia: The Sims 3 Game as a Life Lab.” Biography 38.2 (2015): 155-80.Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010.———. “Virtually Me: A Toolbox about Online Self-Presentation.” Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Eds. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 70-95.

Babies and toddlers are amassing huge followings on social media, achieving microcelebrity status, and raking in five figure sums. In East Asia, many of these lucrative “micro­-microcelebrities” rise to fame by inheriting exposure and proximate microcelebrification from their social media Influencer mothers. Through self-branding techniques, Influencer mothers’ portrayals of their young’ children’s lives “as lived” are the canvas on which (baby) products and services are marketed to readers as “advertorials”. In turning to investigate this budding phenomenon, I draw on ethnographic case studies in Singapore to outline the career trajectory of these young children (under 4yo) including their social media presence, branding strategies, and engagement with their followers. The chapter closes with a brief discussion on some ethical considerations of such young children’s labour in the social media age.Influencer MothersTheresa Senft first coined the term “microcelebrity” in her work Camgirls as a burgeoning online trend, wherein people attempt to gain popularity by employing digital media technologies, such as videos, blogs, and social media. She describes microcelebrities as “non-actors as performers” whose narratives take place “without overt manipulation”, and who are “more ‘real’ than television personalities with ‘perfect hair, perfect friends and perfect lives’” (Senft 16), foregrounding their active response to their communities in the ways that maintain open channels of feedback on social media to engage with their following.Influencers – a vernacular industry term albeit inspired by Katz & Lazarsfeld’s notion of “personal influence” that predates Internet culture – are one type of microcelebrity; they are everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following in “digital” and “physical” spaces, and monetize their following by integrating “advertorials” into their blog or social media posts and making physical appearances at events. A pastiche of “advertisement” and “editorial”, advertorials in the Influencer industry are highly personalized, opinion-laden promotions of products/services that Influencers personally experience and endorse for a fee. Influencers in Singapore often brand themselves as having “relatability”, or the ability to persuade their followers to identify with them (Abidin). They do so by make consciously visible the backstage (Goffman) of the usually “inaccessible”, “personal”, and “private” aspects of mundane, everyday life to curate personae that feel “authentic” to fans (Marwick 114), and more accessible than traditional celebrity (Senft 16).Historically, the Influencer industry in Singapore can be traced back to the early beginnings of the “blogshop” industry from the mid-2000s and the “commercial blogging” industry. Influencers are predominantly young women, and market products and services from diverse industries, although the most popular have been fashion, beauty, F&B, travel, and electronics. Most prominent Influencers are contracted to management agencies who broker deals in exchange for commission and assist in the production of their vlogs. Since then, the industry has grown, matured, and expanded so rapidly that Influencers developed emergent models of advertorials, with the earliest cohorts moving into different life stages and monetizing several other aspects of their personal lives such as the “micro-microcelebrity” of their young children. What this paper provides is an important analysis of the genesis and normative practices of micro-microcelebrity commerce in Singapore from its earliest years, and future research trajectories in this field.Micro-Microcelebrity and Proximate MicrocelebrificationI define micro-microcelebrities as the children of Influencers who have themselves become proximate microcelebrities, having derived exposure and fame from their prominent Influencer mothers, usually through a more prolific, deliberate, and commercial form of what Blum-Ross defines as “sharenting”: the act of parents sharing images and stores about their children in digital spaces such as social networking sites and blogs. Marwick (116-117), drawing from Rojek’s work on types of celebrity – distinguishes between two types of microcelebrity: “ascribed microcelebrity” where the online personality is made recognizable through the “production of celebrity media” such as paparazzi shots and user-produced online memes, or “achieved microcelebrity” where users engage in “self-presentation strateg[ies]”, such as fostering the illusion of intimacy with fans, maintaining a persona, and selective disclosure about oneself.Micro-microcelebrities lie somewhere between the two: In a process I term “proximate microcelebrification”, micro-microcelebrities themselves inherit celebrity through the preemptive and continuous exposure from their Influencer mothers, many beginning even during the pre-birth pregnancy stages in the form of ultrasound scans, as a form of “achieved microcelebrity”. Influencer mothers whose “presentational strategies” (cf. Marshall, “Promotion” 45) are successful enough (as will be addressed later) gain traction among followers, who in turn further popularize the micro-microcelebrity by setting up fan accounts, tribute sites, and gossip forums through which fame is heightened in a feedback loop as a model of “ascribed microcelebrity”.Here, however, I refrain from conceptualizing these young stars as “micro-Influencers” for unlike Influencers, these children do not yet curate their self-presentation to command the attention of followers, but instead are used, framed, and appropriated by their mothers for advertorials. In other words, Influencer mothers “curate [micro-microcelebrities’] identities into being” (Leaver, “Birth”). Following this, many aspects of their micro-microcelebrities become rapidly commodified and commercialized, with advertisers clamoring to endorse anything from maternity hospital stays to nappy cream.Although children of mommybloggers have the prospect to become micro-microcelebrities, both groups are conceptually distinct. Friedman (200-201) argues that among mommybloggers arose a tension between those who adopt “the raw authenticity of nonmonetized blogging”, documenting the “unglamorous minutiae” of their daily lives and a “more authentic view of motherhood” and those who use mommyblogs “primarily as a source of extra income rather than as a site for memoir”, focusing on “parent-centered products” (cf. Mom Bloggers Club).In contrast, micro-microcelebrities and their digital presence are deliberately commercial, framed and staged by Influencer mothers in order to maximize their advertorial potential, and are often postured to market even non-baby/parenting products such as fast food and vehicles (see later). Because of the overt commerce, it is unclear if micro-microcelebrity displays constitute “intimate surveillance”, an “almost always well-intentioned surveillance of young people by parents” (Leaver, “Born” 4). Furthermore, children are generally peripheral to mommybloggers whose own parenting narratives take precedence as a way to connect with fellow mothers, while micro-microcelebrities are the primary feature whose everyday lives and digital presence enrapture followers.MethodologyThe analysis presented is informed by my original fieldwork with 125 Influencers and related actors among whom I conducted a mixture of physical and digital personal interviews, participant observation, web archaeology, and archival research between December 2011 and October 2014. However, the material presented here is based on my digital participant observation of publicly accessible and intentionally-public digital presence of the first four highly successful micro-microcelebrities in Singapore: “Baby Dash” (b.2013) is the son of Influencer xiaxue, “#HeYurou” (b.2011) is the niece of Influencer bongqiuqiu, “#BabyElroyE” (b.2014) is the son of Influencer ohsofickle, and “@MereGoRound” (b.2015) is the daughter of Influencer bongqiuqiu.The microcelebrity/social media handles of these children take different forms, following the platform on which their parent/aunt has exposed them on the most. Baby Dash appears in all of xiaxue’s digital platforms under a variety of over 30 indexical, ironic, or humourous hashtags (Leaver, “Birth”) including “#pointylipped”, #pineappledash”, and “#面包脸” (trans. “bread face”); “#HeYurou” appears on bongqiuqiu’s Instagram and Twitter; “#BabyElroyE” appears on ohsofickle’s Instagram and blog, and is the central figure of his mother’s new YouTube channel; and “@MereGoRound” appears on all of bongqiuqiu’s digital platforms but also has her own Instagram account and dedicated YouTube channel. The images reproduced here are screenshot from Influencer mothers’ highly public social media: xiaxue, bongqiuqiu, and ohsofickle boast 593k, 277k, and 124k followers on Instagram and 263k, 41k, and 17k followers on Twitter respectively at the time of writing.Anticipation and Digital EstatesIn an exclusive front-pager (Figure 1) on the day of his induced birth, it was announced that Baby Dash had already received up to SGD25,000 worth of endorsement deals brokered by his Influencer mother, xiaxue. As the first micro-microcelebrity in his cohort (his mother was among the pioneer Influencers), Baby Dash’s Caesarean section was even filmed and posted on xiaxue’s YouTube channel in three parts (Figure 2). xiaxue had announced her pregnancy on her blog while in her second trimester, following which she consistently posted mirror selfies of her baby bump.Figure 1 & 2, screenshot April 2013 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›In her successful attempt at generating anticipation, the “bump” itself seemed to garner its own following on Twitter and Instagram, with many followers discussing how the Influencer dressed “it”, and how “it” was evolving over the weeks. One follower even compiled a collage of xiaxue’s “bump” chronologically and gifted it to the Influencer as an art image via Twitter on the day she delivered Baby Dash (Figure 3 & 4). Followers also frequently speculated and bantered about how her baby would look, and mused about how much they were going to adore him. Figure 3 & 4, screenshot March 2013 from ‹twitter.com/xiaxue› While Lupton (42) has conceptualized the sharing of images that precede birth as a “rite of passage”, Influencer mothers who publish sonograms deliberately do so in order to claim digital estates for their to-be micro-microcelebrities in the form of “reserved” social media handles, blog URLs, and unique hashtags for self-branding. For instance, at the 3-month mark of her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu debuted her baby’s dedicated hashtag, “#MereGoRound” in a birth announcement on her on Instagram account. Shortly after, she started an Instagram account, “@MereGoRound”, for her baby, who amassed over 5.5k followers prior to her birth. Figure 5 & 6, screenshot March 2015 from instagram.com/meregoround and instagram.com/bongqiuqiuThe debut picture features a heavily pregnant belly shot of bongqiuqiu (Figure 5), creating much anticipation for the arrival of a new micro-microcelebrity: in the six months leading up to her birth, various family, friends, and fans shared Instagram images of their gifts and welcome party for @MereGoRound, and followers shared congratulations and fan art on the dedicated Instagram hashtag. During this time, bongqiuqiu also frequently updated followers on her pregnancy progress, not without advertising her (presumably sponsored) gynecologist and hospital stay in her pregnancy diaries (Figure 6) – like Baby Dash, even as a foetus @MereGoRound was accumulating advertorials. Presently at six months old, @MereGoRound boasts almost 40k followers on Instagram on which embedded in the narrative of her growth are sponsored products and services from various advertisers.Non-Baby-Related AdvertorialsPrior to her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu hopped onto the micro-microcelebrity bandwagon in the wake of Baby Dash’s birth, by using her niece “#HeYurou” in her advertorials. Many Influencers attempt to naturalize their advertorials by composing their post as if recounting a family event. With reference to a child, parent, or partner, they may muse or quip about a product being used or an experience being shared in a bid to mask the distinction between their personal and commercial material. bongqiuqiu frequently posted personal, non-sponsored images engaging in daily mundane activities under the dedicated hashtag “#HeYurou”.However, this was occasionally interspersed with pictures of her niece holding on to various products including storybooks (Figure 8) and shopping bags (Figure 9). At first glance, this might have seemed like any mundane daily update the Influencer often posts. However, a close inspection reveals the caption bearing sponsor hashtags, tags, and campaign information. For instance, one Instagram post shows #HeYurou casually holding on to and staring at a burger in KFC wrapping (Figure 7), but when read in tandem with bongqiuqiu’s other KFC-related posts published over a span of a few months, it becomes clear that #HeYurou was in fact advertising for KFC. Figure 7, 8, 9, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/bongqiuqiu›Elsewhere, Baby Dash was incorporated into xiaxue’s car sponsorship with over 20 large decals of one of his viral photos – dubbed “pineapple Dash” among followers – plastered all over her vehicle (Figure 10). Followers who spot the car in public are encouraged to photograph and upload the image using its dedicated hashtag, “#xiaxuecar” as part of the Influencer’s car sponsorship – an engagement scarcely related to her young child. Since then, xiaxue has speculated producing offshoots of “pineapple Dash” products including smartphone casings. Figure 10, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›Follower EngagementSponsors regularly organize fan meet-and-greets headlined by micro-microcelebrities in order to attract potential customers. Photo opportunities and the chance to see Baby Dash “in the flesh” frequently front press and promotional material of marketing campaigns. Elsewhere on social media, several Baby Dash fan and tribute accounts have also emerged on Instagram, reposting images and related media of the micro-microcelebrity with overt adoration, no doubt encouraged by xiaxue, who began crowdsourcing captions for Baby Dash’s photos.Influencer ohsofickle postures #BabyElroyE’s follower engagement in a more subtle way. In her YouTube channel that debut in the month of her baby’s birth, ohsofickle produces video diaries of being a young, single, mother who is raising a child (Figure 11). In each episode, #BabyElroyE is the main feature whose daily activities are documented, and while there is some advertising embedded, ohsofickle’s approach on YouTube is much less overt than others as it features much more non-monetized personal content (Figure 12). Her blog serves as a backchannel to her vlogs, in which she recounts her struggles with motherhood and explicitly solicits the advice of mothers. However, owing to her young age (she became an Influencer at 17 and gave birth at 24), many of her followers are teenagers and young women who respond to her solicitations by gushing over #BabyElroyE’s images on Instagram. Figure 11 & 12, screenshot September 2015 from ‹instagram.com/ohsofickle›PrivacyAs noted by Holloway et al. (23), children like micro-microcelebrities will be among the first cohorts to inherit “digital profiles” of their “whole lifetime” as a “work in progress”, from parents who habitually underestimate or discount the privacy and long term effects of publicizing information about their children at the time of posting. This matters in a climate where social media platforms can amend privacy policies without user consent (23), and is even more pressing for micro-microcelebrities whose followers store, republish, and recirculate information in fan networks, resulting in digital footprints with persistence, replicability, scalability, searchability (boyd), and extended longevity in public circulation which can be attributed back to the children indefinitely (Leaver, “Ends”).Despite minimum age restrictions and recent concerns with “digital kidnapping” where users steal images of other young children to be re-posted as their own (Whigham), some social media platforms rarely police the proliferation of accounts set up by parents on behalf of their underage children prominently displaying their legal names and life histories, citing differing jurisdictions in various countries (Facebook; Instagram), while others claim to disable accounts if users report an “incorrect birth date” (cf. Google for YouTube). In Singapore, the Media Development Authority (MDA) which governs all print and digital media has no firm regulations for this but suggests that the age of consent is 16 judging by their recommendation to parents with children aged below 16 to subscribe to Internet filtering services (Media Development Authority, “Regulatory” 1). Moreover, current initiatives have been focused on how parents can impart digital literacy to their children (Media Development Authority, “Empowered”; Media Literacy Council) as opposed to educating parents about the digital footprints they may be unwittingly leaving about their children.The digital lives of micro-microcelebrities pose new layers of concern given their publicness and deliberate publicity, specifically hinged on making visible the usually inaccessible, private aspects of everyday life (Marshall, “Persona” 5).Scholars note that celebrities are individuals for whom speculation of their private lives takes precedence over their actual public role or career (Geraghty 100-101; Turner 8). However, the personae of Influencers and their young children are shaped by ambiguously blurring the boundaries of privacy and publicness in order to bait followers’ attention, such that privacy and publicness are defined by being broadcast, circulated, and publicized (Warner 414). In other words, the publicness of micro-microcelebrities is premised on the extent of the intentional publicity rather than simply being in the public domain (Marwick 223-231, emphasis mine).Among Influencers privacy concerns have aroused awareness but not action – Baby Dash’s Influencer mother admitted in a national radio interview that he has received a death threat via Instagram but feels that her child is unlikely to be actually attacked (Channel News Asia) – because privacy is a commodity that is manipulated and performed to advance their micro-microcelebrities’ careers. As pioneer micro-microcelebrities are all under 2-years-old at present, future research warrants investigating “child-centred definitions” (Third et al.) of the transition in which they come of age, grow an awareness of their digital presence, respond to their Influencer mothers’ actions, and potentially take over their accounts.Young LabourThe Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in Singapore, which regulates the employment of children and young persons, states that children under the age of 13 may not legally work in non-industrial or industrial settings (Ministry of Manpower). However, the same document later ambiguously states underaged children who do work can only do so under strict work limits (Ministry of Manpower). Elsewhere (Chan), it is noted that national labour statistics have thus far only focused on those above the age of 15, thus neglecting a true reflection of underaged labour in Singapore. This is despite the prominence of micro-microcelebrities who are put in front of (video) cameras to build social media content. Additionally, the work of micro-microcelebrities on digital platforms has not yet been formally recognized as labour, and is not regulated by any authority including Influencer management firms, clients, the MDA, and the MOM. Brief snippets from my ethnographic fieldwork with Influencer management agencies in Singapore similarly reveal that micro-microcelebrities’ labour engagements and control of their earnings are entirely at their parents’ discretion.As models and actors, micro-microcelebrities are one form of entertainment workers who if between the ages of 15 days and 18 years in the state of California are required to obtain an Entertainment Work Permit to be gainfully employed, adhering to strict work, schooling, and rest hour quotas (Department of Industrial Relations). Furthermore, the Californian Coogan Law affirms that earnings by these minors are their own property and not their parents’, although they are not old enough to legally control their finances and rely on the state to govern their earnings with a legal guardian (Screen Actors Guild). However, this similarly excludes underaged children and micro-microcelebrities engaged in creative digital ecologies. Future research should look into safeguards and instruments among young child entertainers, especially for micro-micrcocelebrities’ among whom commercial work and personal documentation is not always distinct, and are in fact deliberately intertwined in order to better engage with followers for relatabilityGrowing Up BrandedIn the wake of moral panics over excessive surveillance technologies, children’s safety on the Internet, and data retention concerns, micro-microcelebrities and their Influencer mothers stand out for their deliberately personal and overtly commercial approach towards self-documenting, self-presenting, and self-publicizing from the moment of conception. As these debut micro-microcelebrities grow older and inherit digital publics, personae, and careers, future research should focus on the transition of their ownership, engagement, and reactions to a branded childhood in which babies were postured for an initimate public.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “Communicative Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology. Forthcoming, Nov 2015.Aiello, Marianne. “Mommy Blog Banner Ads Get Results.” Healthcare Marketing Advisor 17 Nov. 2010. HealthLeaders Media. 16 Aug. 2015 ‹http://healthleadersmedia.com/content/MAR-259215/Mommy-Blog-Banner-Ads-Get-Results›.Azzarone, Stephanie. “When Consumers Report: Mommy Blogging Your Way to Success.” Playthings 18 Feb. 2009. 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