FRAMING THE WORK OF OUTSOURCED CONTENT MODERATION: A CRITICAL TECHNO-CULTURAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN THE CONTEXT OF DANIEL MOTAUNG’S CASE

Abstract

This thesis examines how discourses concerning the work of outsourced content moderation reveal socially reproductive labor as culturally and historically devalued in response to the technological and ideological context of the neoliberal platform economy. By content moderation, I refer to the work of filtering the circulation of content on social media platforms, which has been documented as organized into exploitative and harmful conditions of labor. In order to unpack how outsourced content moderation exposes a specifically devalued form of socially reproductive labor, I analyze the frames under which this work is discursively construed in a material that I associate with the case of an activist, public figure, and a former content moderator, Daniel Motaung. This case evolved from 2022 until the present, addressing the exploitative and harmful conditions of work at a Nairobi office of the outsourcing firm Sama, which used to provide content moderation services for the U.S.-based platform corporation Meta. In order to engage with this case, I take guidance in the perspective of critical-techno-cultural discourse analysis (CTDA). Based on this perspective, I then address how the frames that ascribe meaning, normative ideas, and values to the work of outsourced content moderation are informed by a specific ideological and technological context. To this point, I collected material in the form of newspaper reports together with promotions of digital platforms and outsourcing firms. On the basis of this material, I focus on how outsourced content moderation is framed within two distinct discursive contexts (a) investigative journalism and (b) platform corporations/outsourcing firms. As a result, based on the way that outsourced content moderation is framed in the material stemming from the discursive contexts associated with Motaung’s case, I argue that it reveals a distinct form of social reproductive contradiction that is integral to the technological and ideological context of the neoliberal platform economy.