Doing digital discipline: how Airbnb hosts engage with the digital platform

Mathilde Dissing Christensen

Mobilities, 2023, vol. 18, issue 1, 70-85

Abstract: Digital platforms and activities permeate everyday lives in multiple ways. They organize different modes of movement, and sometimes, who moves and who stays still. This paper takes its empirical starting point by exploring Airbnb hosts, not only through the lens of tourism labour but also within the larger context of platform-mediated work. This paper pursues two aims in exploring how trust is produced and negotiated on the platform and how the platform serves to align host performances towards corporate interests. The paper argues that the affordances of the platform are designed to develop digital credibility, or digital capital, which in turn functions to discipline hosting performances, which become instrumentalized, measured, and controlled in accordance with business interests and corporate understandings of hosting performances. In doing this, the paper argues that the development of digital capital is integral to navigating the digital platform successfully and explores how digital capital is produced and instrumentalized through the development of profiles, the review system, and the superhost status. This paper contributes insights into the workings of a key platform for facilitating tourism but also adds to the current discussion on the organization of interactions in platform capitalism.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2022.2060756

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