Welcome back to our CLCF profile series, where each month we interview a CLCF researcher to hear more about their projects (check out our previous profiles here). This April, we’re chatting with CLCF Research Assistant Helena Wright. Helena is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information and is working under the supervision of Dr. Grohmann. Her research explores the intersections of technology, labour, and platform studies.

Rafael: In a nutshell, who are you as a researcher?

Helena: That is a really great question. 

When I came out of my undergrad, I was interested in media and the digital humanities. My masters cohort actually voted me as ‘most likely to become internet famous’ because I was obsessed with social media and digital culture. At the time, I wrote papers on memes, influencers, and even the evolution of internet language and emojis. I realized I loved writing about the minutia of day-to-day online life, like the cultural norms, the community dynamics, the overlooked interactions. That curiosity, plus having to take adulting more seriously, led me towards the workplace. And you know, most of us spend the majority of our days working at jobs, so for a lot of people, the workplace is the day-to-day. When I started working professionally, I entered into the tech industry, in this new world of enterprise software and tooling, and became really interested in the platforms and digital ecosystems that shape working life. We could say I transitioned from Twitter and Instagram to LinkedIn and Slack.

Broadly, I’d say I study the tech industry and the future of work, at the intersection of labour, management, and platform studies. Within that, I’m interested in white-collar tech worker culture, operationalizing platforms, AI, organizational behaviour, and policy, and how these all shape institutional practices, tech development, and the everyday experience of work. As much as I consider myself an academic, I also see myself as a tech worker, and my research bridges those two worlds together. My work experience deeply informs how I approach research and how I balance my perspective. I think it pushes me to consider the nuances and ask both analytical and practical questions. 

M.E.: How does your career background as a tech worker intersect with your current research on tech workers and surveillance/privacy?

Helena: This might sound obvious, but tech companies are more agile and tech-oriented than some more traditional verticals. I really appreciate that tech workers have this collective cultural curiosity towards experimenting and trying out new tools and systems. Working remotely, I had the chance to use a lot of different platforms, for things like project management, marketing, note-taking, communication etc., and see first hand how these systems collect, store, and analyze organizational and worker data. I became really interested in understanding how worker data shapes organizational norms, operational practices, performance assessments, and really the day-to-day of worker life. 

I worked in data analytics and sales, which are two extremely metric-focused areas of the business. Sales specifically, is I think a little bit unique, in that many elements of the role are easily tracked and quantified, like emails sent, phone calls, deals made etc, and your success is based on your ability to meet a quota, which is inherently data-driven. Unlike other roles, it’s very clear if you are not meeting expectations. Because everything is metrics driven, the level of surveillance can be quite high, but there is a culturally accepted level of transparency because it’s performance-based. For example, most outreach tools will have leaderboards with activity metrics to encourage friendly competition, but are visible for the wider team and management. So there is this interesting dynamic in how salespeople forgo privacy, and embrace surveillance. Though, not all organizations and jobs are as forthcoming about how worker data is used, which could be considered an issue of worker privacy. I think with integration-first platforms and AI, it will be much easier to aggregate and interpret worker data, which can be extremely privacy invasive. So, I suspect that organizations will soon need to consider and implement appropriate internal safeguards, which I am hoping to explore further in my own research. 

Daphne: Can you tell us a bit about the recently launched Worker Mobilizations around AI in Arts, Culture, and Media database? How did you go about collecting and organizing data, what kind of challenges did you run into, and how might the database evolve?

Helena: Yes, we’re so excited to have launched the tracker! This project is a massive database that tracks workers resistance to AI in the cultural sector, and that includes, but is not limited to, animators, actors, screenwriters, artists, and voice actors. A big part of this next step is getting feedback from the broader community. We want to hear from activists, workers, researchers, anybody really, who can share additional institutions. Resistance might look like strikes, protests, campaigns, or even manifestos. When the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike, some parts of Hollywood shut down, which invited a lot of press, making it easy to find new articles. But for smaller organizations that are taking a grassroots approach, we leaned into social media, like Instagram and reddit, to find flyers and resources. Also, I found that similar organizations, like the Guilds, would have national or international partnerships or collaborations. From there, I could follow a trail of references to find which guilds had taken action. For me, one of the biggest challenges of building this global tracker has been ensuring meaningful inclusion of organizations across countries. The search tools that I am using, like Google, might not surface relevant sources, especially if I am searching in English. Also, in some cases, organizations might communicate and share information on regionally dominant platforms or networks, which browser searches can’t capture. Right now, the plan is to keep this tracker as a dynamic database that is continuously updated as more organizations are added.

Rafael: What is your star sign?

Helena: I am a Virgo Sun and Aries Moon!! (more moon than sun though) 

Follow Helena’s work with CLCF here.