Diversifying Digital Platform Workers: Effect of Platform Policies and Features on Race and Gender Inequality
More creators are using platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, or Twitch to publish content and connect with millions of daily users. However, women and people of color remain underrepresented on these content platforms. Thinking of such platforms as workplaces, sociologist Anne-Kathrin Kronberg investigates how platform policies and features affect women’s and people of color’s participation and viewership. Kronberg previously created a longitudinal career panel using daily Twitch activity logs of 2,000 creators, representing a random sample of creators on the platform. Her current study will augment this panel by 1) inspecting creators’ profile pages to identify race and gender and 2) coding all Twitch announcements of policy and feature updates since 2015. These unique data can link platform changes to race and gender differences in participation and viewership, significantly advancing the understanding of platform effects on inequality.