Research papers

This research details how Indonesians working in the tourism sector are included or excluded from the travel platform economy. It investigates why these actors are choosing to use travel platforms and how they express the benefits and constraints in this context. Inclusion in the platform economy involves understanding and addressing structures…

In recent years, the Philippines has seen a trend of platformization in domestic and care work through small-scale digital platforms that offer on-demand cleaning services. The nascent and informal nature of this system has given rise to new modes of employment and labor relationships that do not conform with the traditional models of domestic…

This paper examines the influence of digital platforms on Chinese workers across two booming on-demand service industries: ride-hailing and food-delivery. Though digital platforms have attracted considerable scholarly and legal attention in the past few years, this project is among one of the first to center on worker’s experience, and through…

This research project investigates the institutional, policy and operational dynamics of ride-hailing platforms in South Africa. A limited number of studies on platform economies in African nations have been conducted from business and economics perspectives that often do not focus on issues of inequality, poverty, economic inclusion and social…

This report was produced as part of the research project ‘Policy frameworks for digital platforms - Moving from openness to inclusion’.The report provides evidence from the Nigerian context to complement the global debate on designing appropriate regulatory frameworks for platforms that ensure accountability of platform providers to the…

Anushka Mittal published a research paper as part of the Data Governance Network project titled, ‘Exploring the Constitutional Tenability of Data Sharing Policies’, analyzing the recommendations of the Draft Non-Personal Data Committee Report for community ownership of data and data sharing, from the perspective of its constitutional status in…

Parminder Jeet Singh authored a working paper titled, 'Breaking Up Big Tech: Separation of its Data, Cloud and Intelligence Layers', arguing that traditional competition frameworks are inadequate to address the rapidly building digital power concentration. Competition frameworks need to be combined with perspectives from technology governance…

Translation is seen as a high-skilled professional activity, which restricts its reach. Three members of an NGO, that works with government schools, attempted to translate text from English to Kannada, using easily accessible digital tools; the NGO also supported teams of student-teachers and teachers to use these tools for translating…

Schools and educational institutions have tended to use proprietary software applications: software that is not sold, but ‘licensed’, by the vendor. Here, the institution is only a ‘user’, and neither owns the software nor has any control over it. Over the last decade, however, the Indian public school and higher education systems have made…

This is the third issue paper, written by Anita Gurumurthy, for the Feminist Digital Justice -- a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of IT for Change and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era).

The platform economy -- dominated by a few firms -- is extractivist,exploitative,and expedient. It is based on an…