TWITCH.TV, AS NOVAS FRONTEIRAS DO TRABALHO PLATAFORMIZADO

Abstract

With the advent of the Information Technology (IT) new industrial and business models start to be formed, along with new forms of labor organization. Information centered on databases became a central point of capitalist production. Platform Companies, using their databases, act as a new interface that mediates productive relationships between their different actors. In addition to Platforms, we see another type of organizational configuration that emerges with IT, the Business Network, an amorphous structure with several points that are connected, thus forming complex productive chains that form a network of productive relations. The organizational structures of production and labor are reconfigured. To understand these transformations, we look at Twitch.tv, and how labor is organized within its structures. Twitch.tv is a live streaming platform where thousands of people try to make a living Streaming in it. Twitch presents us with the possibility of analyzing the workings of a Platform company and its insertion in a Business Network. Twitch.tv when it was purchased by Amazon, it was inserted within its global productive network, and with that, several of Twitch's structures are modified, as well as the form in which labor is organized. To understand how work relationships are organized and transformed, we turned to those who work there, the “Streamers”. We rely on the sources collected by one of the authors insertion within the platform as a spectators, as well as interviews with consolidated Streamers, which allow us a better understanding of the productive and work relationships inserted in Platform Companies.

Keywords: Platform capitalism, platform labor, Twitch, Streamers.