Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) at the University of Toronto Mississauga and holds a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Information. She has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. Before joining the University of Toronto, she was a Lecturer in the School of Media, Communication, and Sociology at the University of Leicester.
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Specialization
Digital Labor Studies, Platform Studies, Political Economy of ICTs, Information policy, New Media and Society
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Research
Dr. Chen is interested in studying how culture, digital technologies, and the established economic structures shape the experience and perception of work. She has published work examining different types of digital work and the social and cultural implications of emerging information and media technologies. Her recent project explores the changing work conditions, employment patterns, and struggles in the booming platform economy in China, with a focus on the ride-hailing and food-delivery service sectors. It has led to several journal article publications in the New Media & Society, Chinese Journal of Communication, and TripleC. She is the lead author of Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (2018), the first academic book that explored the development of WeChat into a super-app and its social and political impact.
She will be releasing a new book in May 2022 titled “Laboring for Big Data: the Coerced, the Invisible and the Marginalized,” which explores the relationship between labor and datafication and tries to explain how and why labor is marginalized, as an embodied experience and an analytical concept, in the conceptions of (big) datafication and what we should do about this problematic tendency.
Julie was recently awarded a SSHRC-IDG grant for her research project titled Data-driven AI and the Future of Work. She has presented on digital labour and the platform economy at virtual invited talks in Asia, the USA and Canada.
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Publications
Books
Chen, Y., Mao, Z. and Qiu, J. (2018). Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society. Emerald.
Journal Articles
Chen, J.Y. & Sun, SP. (2020). “Temporal Arbitrage, the Fragmented Rush, and Opportunistic Behaviors: The labor politics of time in the platform economy.” New Media & Society (forthcoming).
Chen, J.Y. & Qiu, JL. (2019). “Digital Utility: Datafication, Regulation, Labor, and DiDi’s Platformization of Urban Transport in China.” Chinese Journal of Communication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2019.1614964
Chen, J. Y. (2018). China’s Platform Economies: The Boss’s Old and New Clothes. Made in China: A Quarterly on Chinese Labour, Civil Society, and Rights. Issue 3: 54-57.
Chen, J. Y. (2017). Thrown under the bus and outrunning it! The logic of Didi and taxi drivers’ labor and activism in the on-demand economy. New Media & Society (September), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817729149
Smith, M., Chen, Y. (corresponding author), Berndtson, R., Burson, K., & Gaches, W. (2017). “Office Hours and Student Faculty Interaction: Moving from Triage to Primary Care.” InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching 27: 12, 14-29. Available at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1152098.pdf
Chen, Y. (2014). “Production Cultures and Differentiations of Digital Labour.” tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 12, no. 2: 648–67. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v12i2.547
Griffin, W., Cohen, S., Berndtson, R., Burson, K., Camper, M., Chen, Y. & Smith, M. (2014). “Starting the Conversation: An Exploratory Study of Factors That Influence Student Office Hour Use.” College Teaching 62, no. 3: 94–99. doi:10.1080/87567555.2014.896777.
Chen, Y. (2013). “Speculations on Bodies and Embodied Spatial Politics in the Transnational Virtual Labor Mobility: the Case of Chinese Gold Farmers,” Powerline 1:1 (April).
Book Chapters
Chen, J.Y. (2017) “Chapter 10: Technologies of control, communication, and calculation: taxi driver’s labor in the platform economy.” in Moore, P., Upchurch, M., & Whittaker, X. (Eds.). Humans and machines at work: monitoring, surveillance and automation in contemporary capitalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 231–255.
Qiu, J.L. and Chen, J.Y. (2018). “Chapter 13: Margins at the Center: Alternative Digital Economies in Shenzhen, China.” In Graham, M. (Ed.). Digital Economies at Global Margins, MIT Press, pp.319-39.
Chen, J.Y. (2018) “Mind the gap: When getting-a-ride becomes an app behavior in China.” in Galperin, H., & Alarcon, A. (Eds.). The Future of Work in the Global South (pp. 24–27). Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre.
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Affiliations
Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT)
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Course Titles
- CCT490H: The Political Economy of Digital Platforms: A Global Perspective
- CCT200: Race, Media, and Culture
