Lyn Hoang - Working in the platform economy - Inspiring Minds 2021

Inspiring Minds seeks to broaden awareness and impact of graduate student research, while enhancing transferable skills. Students were challenged to describe their research, scholarship or creative activity in 150 or fewer words to share with our community.

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Inspiring Minds portrait graphic: Lyn Hoang, Working in the Platform Economy

In 2018, a 7-year-old boy earned US$22 million dollars from his YouTube videos demonstrating that influencer can be a profitable career. Increasingly, more people are earning incomes through other digital platforms like sharing their home on Airbnb, or vehicle on Uber. Yet is work in this platform economy just a side hustle to earn extra money? Or does it indicate a more permanent trajectory of work that is not salaried and full-time? Given that one-in-five Canadians work in the platform economy, it is necessary to uncover any potential impacts, challenges and consequences that stem from working in this economy. Even more, this industry is operating in a grey area not entirely covered by current regulations and policies. The findings from this research can be used to inform the construction of evidence-based policies that can better regulate the platform economy and provide protections for workers.

Lyn Hoang
PhD Candidate - Department of Sociology
Faculty of Social Science - Western University

Supervisors
Anton Allahar
Tracey Adams

Lyn Hoang received her masters in sociology from Western University and is currently completing her PhD in sociology at Western University. She is a Digital Sociologist and her research interest examine new ways of working, specifically digital or manual work within, or mediated by, the growing Platform/Gig Economy. She is also interested in examining social inequality in work and issues of Internet access among different social groups. Her PhD research explores people’s motivations for pursuing work in the platform economy and how they derive meaning from their work. As well as how these new forms of will impact working, policies, and legislation within Canada.

View Lyn's work as it appears in the Inspiring Minds Digital Collection.