Digital Platforms and ‘Connective’ Inequalities: The Case of Airbnb

The initial polarization in the academic debate on digital platforms between a ‘positive’ view (stressing the rising of the so called ‘sharing economy’) and a more ‘pessimistic’ one (pointing to the fragmentation and the externalization of labour processes) has recently been enriched by a broad spectrum of less ‘transparent’ and non-deterministic approaches to the so-called ‘platform society’ (van Dijck, Poell and de Waal 2018). Digital platforms are now framed as ongoing (and never fully stabilized) performative processes, heavily based on users’ engagement and more or less visible work (van Dijck 2013; Plantin et al. 2018). Referring to in-depth research on Airbnb Hosts conducted in a touristic north Italian province (in 2019), in this chapter we examine how the Airbnb platform mobilizes Hosts’ material and immaterial resources as key elements of the platform infrastructure, thus building on Hosts’ previous differences in terms of economic possibilities, digital competences, and relational networks. As we will show, the relationship the Airbnb platform builds with its Hosts, and the possibility for Hosts to fulfil the platform standards and requests, reproduce a set of inequalities that we could define as ‘connective’, in that they are tied to the resources/skills required to be fully connected to the contemporary digital infrastructures, the ability to smoothly manage ‘online’ and ‘offline’ relationships, and the possibility to mobilize a network of personal relationships.