Uneven datafication discusses the spatial dimensions of information political economy within a data colonialism framework. The paper first debates three approaches to fundamental changes brought about by datafication, namely techno-feudalism (Dean, 2024; Durand, 2024; Varoufakis, 2023), death of capitalism and the emergence of  vectoralist-hacker class (Wark, 2019), and data colonialism(Couldry & Mejias, 2019a; Madianou, 2019a; Thatcher et al., 2016). Discussing the limits of these frameworks, the paper reflects on Samir Amin and Niel Smith’s work on uneven development to argue for the relevance of data colonialism, especially in explaining the digital disparities beyond the dominant digital divide discourse. Consequently, the paper deepens the spatial aspects of data colonialism by expanding Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession (2003) through Butler and Athanasiou's (2013) idea of dispossession concerning subjectivity, survival, and livability. It argues for the spatial aspects of subjectivity in an unevenly datafied world and discusses a sense of being out of place or not being in the proper place. The paper then expands this spatial analysis to different scales, from using human bodies as infrastructural space of datafied borders and identity systems to smart city enclaves in free trade zones (Slobodian 2023), and eventually the space programs of Big Tech companies for leaving the earth and its inhabitants behind. The paper criticises the current data colonialism accounts for assuming the annihilation of space contrary to historical colonialism’s geographical expansion. It shows how data colonialism produces and redistributes space as part of its machinery of expansion and datafication at a planetary scale.

Current political commentary as well as research in human geography and social sciences often link the electoral success of authoritarian parties to the dominance over digital platforms and the use of elaborate online strategies. The focus on digital media seems to offer a key for understanding the transformation of political systems throughout the Global North and the rise of political actors operating largely without – or against – local and established party structures. At the same time, such analyses run the risk of fetishizing digital media and reproducing a blind spot by losing sight of the question of the socio-spatial mediation through the party system. Recapitulating the existing literature on the political party in human geography and its treatment of ‘the digital’, we identify the need for an increased engagement with the emerging uneven virtual geographies of party politics. We develop the argument that the parallel transformations of party systems and platformization since the 2008 crisis should lead us to link both processes conceptually. Platformization reshapes the terrain for political parties, facilitating a restructuring of their internal geographies, electoral strategies as well as relations with the broader constituency. In our contribution, we draw on three empirical vignettes from recent German elections in 2024 and 2025 to discuss contours of a virtual political geography perspective linking platformization and the changing figuration of the party.

Digitale Infrastrukturen bilden die physische materielle Grundlage der digitalen Transformation, wobei eine Auseinandersetzung mit den materiellen Elementen und der damit einhergehenden Bedeutungsproduktion vielfach ausbleibt. Infrastrukturen wirken auf der Ebene der Imaginationen und Fantasien (Larkin 2013), die wiederum konkurrierende Vorstellungen innerhalb von Gesellschaften produzieren. Diese fordern die Gegenwart heraus, generieren alternative Visionen der Zukunft (Hughes 2024) und werden vielfach von mächtigen Sprecherpositionen (re-)produziert. Somit sind die Vorstellungen von Infrastrukturen immer als gesellschaftlich und politisch zu begreifen. Ausgehend von „Dreamscapes of Modernity” (Jasanoff & Kim 2015) möchte ich in meinem Vortrag einen Beitrag zu den soziotechnischen Imaginationen digitaler Infrastrukturen leisten. Innerhalb der Data Center Studies haben Arbeiten wie „The Data Center as Technological Wilderness“ (Taylor 2019) oder „Technologies of Imagination: Locating the cloud in Sweden’s North“ (Vonderau 2018) bereits (re-)produzierte Imaginationen einzelner Datenzentren-Projekte in den geographischen Peripherien analysiert. Mit meinem Beitrag schließe ich an diese Debatten an, jedoch mit einer Perspektive, die ein Ensemble an Internetinfrastrukturen in den Interconnection Hubs in Marseille, Madrid und Barcelona in den Fokus nimmt. Diese Standorte haben sich in den letzten Jahren als strategisch wichtig für die Interconnection von IP-Netzwerken entwickelt und weisen umfangreiche Verbindungen zu angrenzenden Regionen und Kontinenten auf. Bei genauer Betrachtung dieser Verbindungen wird jedoch sichtbar, dass die Topographien der materiellen Infrastrukturen zwischen Südeuropa und Nordafrika von Ungleichheiten geprägt sind und damit divergierende Machtverhältnisse produzieren. In meinem Vortag werde ich erste Ergebnisse von meinem Feldforschungsaufenthalt zu konkurrierenden Imaginationen präsentieren, die die Wahrnehmung einzelner Akteure der südeuropäischen Interconnections Hubs gegenüber den nordafrikanischen Märkten prägen. Außerdem werde ich darstellen, inwieweit einzelne technologische Elemente wie beispielsweise Datenzentren oder KI-Infrastrukturen als Vermittler für diese Vorstellungen fungieren.

The ‘EllaLink’ submarine cable system has provided a direct physical internet route between Europe and Latin America for the first time since 2021. Since then, it has been possible for internet service providers, cloud service providers, virtual private network providers and operators of research networks to operationalise their transcontinental IP traffic using the submarine cable between Sines in Portugal and Fortalezza in Brazil - and thus not rely solely on the routes that have existed for several decades via infrastructures on US territory. Against this backdrop, EllaLink was promoted in Brazil in particular as an infrastructure that represents an important building block for strengthening or regaining the country's ‘digital sovereignty’ vis-à-vis the USA. In our article, we would like to complicate this interpretation and address a dimension of internet infrastructures that has so far received little attention in research on ‘digital sovereignty’ and ‘digital geopolitics’: the geopolitically unintended effects of internet infrastructures. Using an exploratory mapping of EllaLink and a diachronic analysis of IP routes before and after the submarine cable was commissioned, we show that the original geopolitical goal of strengthening Brazil's sovereignty with regard to the USA is now being countered by an increasing development of the Brazilian telecommunications market by European companies. Finally, we would like to discuss what these politically ‘unintended’ effects of internet infrastructures can mean for further research into digital geopolitics.

Die automatisierte Ermittlung städtebaulicher Kennzahlen gewinnt in datenbasierten Planungsprozessen zunehmend an Relevanz. In dieser Studie werden zwei technisch unterschiedliche Workflows zur Berechnung der Grundflächenzahl (GRZ) auf Flurstücksebene im Hamburger Stadtgebiet miteinander verglichen: ein semi-automatisierter Ansatz in QGIS sowie ein vollständig automatisierter Workflow auf Basis von SQL-Abfragen in einer PostGIS-Datenbank. Beide Verfahren greifen auf das standardisierte Katasterdatensystem ALKIS zurück und berücksichtigen die juristische Differenzierung von Haupt- und Nebenanlagen gemäß § 19 BauNVO.

Die Analyse erfolgt entlang zentraler Bewertungskriterien: Rechenaufwand, Skalierbarkeit, Reproduzierbarkeit, Datenintegrität und Ergebnisgenauigkeit. Während der QGIS-basierte Ansatz durch seine grafische Benutzeroberfläche und Interaktivität punktet, überzeugt die SQL-Variante insbesondere bei der Verarbeitung umfangreicher Datenbestände – mit einer um etwa 43 % kürzeren Laufzeit gegenüber der QGIS-Methode. In beiden Fällen zeigen sich weitgehend konsistente GRZ-Ergebnisse; kleinere Abweichungen treten lediglich in Sonderfällen auf (z. B. bei überlappenden Gebäudegeometrien). Die regelkonforme Integration juristischer Vorgaben in den SQL-Workflow erlaubt eine transparente, reproduzierbare Auswertung auf Grundlage national standardisierter Geodaten.

Die Studie bietet somit eine belastbare Entscheidungsbasis für die Auswahl geeigneter Werkzeuge in großmaßstäblichen städtebaulichen Analysen und leistet einen Beitrag zur Entwicklung nachvollziehbarer, übertragbarer Bewertungsprozesse im digitalen Planungsalltag.

Data collections are the foundation for any administration. City administration provides a good example to discern different forms of data collection and storage and its genealogy. From municipal statistics in the modern city, through opinion polls, base maps and GIS to open data and transactional data in near-real time — the data available for a „seeing like a city“ has successively broadened. Recently, there is an important qualitative shift ongoing. Broad and diverse data are increasingly integrated and made available for automated pattern recognition and analysis.

The city of Barcelona is a pioneer in open data policies. Since 2018 a dedicated data office is establishing a data ecosystem paradigm throughout the administration. Barcelona is therefore a prime example to detail effects of this new mode of data governance for urban politics. In the talk, we will emphasize implications of the ‚data lake‘ approach in Barcelona for the way the city ‚sees‘ and answers its problems. The new mode of algorithmic governance establishes a perspective on the city as ecosystem and implicitly suggests a cybernetic form of management. This also shifts the understanding of its democratic foundation. Safeguarding equilibrium and the functioning of the status quo precedes any democratic will-formation. The example allows to substantiate a critique of algorithmic governance ‘on the ground‘."

This talk investigates how digital methods and tools, especially geoparsing and interactive spatial decision support tools, can impact the land development process in city administrations by spatially gathering relevant information based on location. As part of their mission to maintain and improve quality of life in cities, responsible authorities need to make decisions on land trading, including land valuation, defining development potentials, assessing public interests, and strategic relevance for urban development processes.

With the expansion of municipal geodata structures, the quantitative data required for decision-making is often easily available. On the other hand, qualitative information (e.g. community concerns, public debates, contextual information on development areas) is not spatially located and spread over different sources like news organizations, documentation of parliament proceedings, or policy documents. The easy availability of this information would simplify and support the decision-making process.

This talk will introduce AGORA, a prototype toolbox that aims to improve decision-making processes for land development, which is being designed collaboratively between a municipal land development agency (as practice partner) and a research institution. Specifically, we want to introduce the geoparsing feature that addresses the shortcomings discussed above. It makes use of geoparsing methods to extract and map spatial information from text-based content, making it easier to incorporate into spatial decision-making processes.

Within our talk, we will share insights from user testing of the geoparsing feature with our practice partner's test users. Following this, we will conceptualize the implementation of a decision support tool based on the ideas of the above-mentioned prototype, regarding questions like processing live data, including a variety of sources, and user experience centered around interactive maps.

In Spain’s Aragón region, the tech giant Amazon aims to establish one of Europe’s largest data technology hubs. Unprecedented investments are expanding data centres for Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud technology that provides the platform for any internet-based activity like the very recent increased use of artificial intelligence (AI). These are promoting Aragón to be the “Virginia of Europe” (Azcón, 2024) or the “Silicon Valley of Spain” (La Jornada, 2025) a promise of economic growth cantered around future technologies. The peri-urban lands of metropolitan Zaragoza offer access to favourable land, energy and especially water resources, that sustain data centres thirst, and at the same time prove the very material effects of cloud technologies (Monserrate, 2022).

However, due to their importance for the sociomaterial configuration and symbolic-cultural identity, the alteration of water sources and flows has historically triggered public involvement and conflicts in the region (Blásquiz, 2022; Montoya-Hidalgo, 2007). These developments are expected to be exacerbated by climate change, which will lead to both more water shortages and flooding events in the future. As a response, AWS strategy entails the restoration of inoperative or polluted water sources and the modernization of critical infrastructure, including sensor warning systems, AI, and the Internet of Things (IoT), to “revolutionize” critical water infrastructure towards climate change resilience (AWS, 2025).

I propose to conceptualize these resource-intensive, digital technologies as water assemblages to monitor, predict, and control water bodies and critical infrastructure. Thereby, these assemblages are creating novel digital hydrosocial territories (DHTs), spatio-temporally bound multi-scalar networks of (more-than-)human, material and immaterial, elements (Hommes et al., 2022; Reyes Escate et al., 2022). Herein, water is considered as relational and known or enacted in various ways through its contingency and complexity, which give rise to multiple ontologies — fluctuating realities (Yates et al., 2017) — that can contradict dominant techno-solutionist developments. To this end, I add findings from a more-than-human ethnography that follows water and assembles visuals, voices and (counter-)stories within Zaragoza’s DHTs. With this onto-relational approach I intend to rethink (non-)human-technology relations (Luque- Ayala et al., 2024), account for practices of resistance, and to contribute to critical debates around water justice and digitalization in times of climate change (Gómez Delgado, 2025).

Past research has dealt with the divide between lay and expert, or amateur and professional actors in length. However, additionally muddying the waters of classification, we find among social media platforms and online forums also many examples of users which present as lay or amateur actors, but are in fact professionals, accredited specialists, or PR teams instrumentally wielding - or unconsciously adopting from within a set cultural blueprints - a non-establishment label. Thus, we find PhD holders giving expertise on low-production YouTube channels, precariously-employed freelance professionals giving expertise anonymously via online forums, and professionalized content creators, performers, and bloggers adopting an „amateur“ aesthetic in order to capitalize on the premium demand for authenticity. What to make, then, of these formal experts and professionals performing a certain lay-ness or amateurishness in their online performances? Drawing from multiple literatures concerning lay expertise, social media influencers, and online sex work – as well as my own empirical research on YouTubers spreading information in times of crisis – I discuss the paradoxical phenomenon of the aesthetic “amateurization” of online performances. Here, value is turned on its head, as low-production value signifies “authenticity” and thus high ethical value, credibility, and intimacy, while overly produced online content can appear forced, commercial, or dishonest.

Technologies are often proposed as means to enhance accessibility, mobility, and autonomy for people with disabilities. This article critically examines such claims and aims to conceptualise and empirically explore the relational entanglements of disabilities and technologies in everyday life, highlighting how diverse technologies – intimate, assistive, and infrastructural – can simultaneously enable and constrain accessibility, autonomy, and inclusion.

To this end, the article weaves together critical disability studies, digital geographies, and feminist science and technology studies, introducing the concept of dis:abilities to describe the relational, inseparable, fluid, and diverse nature of disabilities and abilities. It develops the notion of relational technological entanglements with dis:abilities and places this in dialogue with emerging scholarship that pursues innovative methodological and empirical approaches to explore entanglements. The article presents findings from a co-productive, mobile and visual research study with dis:abled people, including video-based mobile eye-tracking.

Findings reveal that while technologies play a central role in enabling everyday practices, mobilities, autonomy, and emotional well-being, the participants’ narratives underscore the fragilities, ambiguities, and non-linearities of relying on a range of technologies. Technological temporalities and ephemeralities can give rise to moments of vulnerability. Moreover, the benefits these technologies offer often come at the cost of significant effort, time, and financial resources. Despite being framed as offering seamless support, their material and visible dimensions can reinforce exclusion, discrimination, and alienation within the dis/ability complex.

This paper explores how emotionally responsive AI pet robots participate in the valuation of intimacy, space, and companionship within domestic environments. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative case study, the research investigates how Moflin, a machine learning–based “emotional” pet robot, co-creates affective atmospheres and reconfigures spatial routines in the home of a formerly socially active woman now experiencing reduced mobility and social isolation due to illness.

Combining interactive autoethnography via secure messaging, semi-structured interviews, and affect-coded spatial mapping, the study traces how the introduction of Moflin re-shapes emotional attachments to everyday objects, rooms, and embodied routines. It asks: How are digital devices like AI pets emotionally evaluated in domestic care contexts? What kinds of intimate spaces and technosocial relationships emerge around them? And how do these technologies come to “matter” ethically, affectively, and spatially in the lives of individuals navigating restricted relational geographies?

The paper draws on emotional geography, affective atmosphere theory (Anderson 2009), and valuation studies that understand value as situated and experiential (Fourcade 2011; Muniesa 2012). It frames AI pet companionship as a relational practice in which emotional and ethical value is enacted through daily routines, spatial arrangements, and felt intimacy. This perspective highlights how digital technologies like Moflin become meaningful - not through function alone, but through the affective attachments and ethical resonances they generate in everyday life.

It thus aims to enrich digital geography’s understanding of valuation as a lived and intimate process, grounded in relational practices and subtle everyday negotiations with space and emerging technosocial agents.

The label "smart" in smart city agendas is often used as a seemingly commonsense and apolitical descriptor, despite its intrinsic judgemental nature. Yet critical research has highlighted how it conceals underlying political ideologies and normative assumptions. This talk interrogates the value systems at play in both smart city initiatives and their critiques, focusing on the U.S. context. Drawing on a narrative analysis of academic literature, I first identify the diverse and often conflicting values that inform discussions of urban digitalization - including recent feminist contributions that propose alternatives to dominant neoliberal frameworks. I then examine how U.S. urban governments define and implement "smart" activities, tracing how these align with or challenge the identified value systems. The talk concludes with a visioning exercise centered on care, inspired on the one hand by current critiques of platform economies and the commodification of care, as well as on the other hand an emerging literature on caring cities. By linking these strands, I propose new pathways for imagining equitable smart city futures, that keep values and praxis in conversation.

Die rasante Entwicklung Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) stellt auch die Humangeographie vor tiefgreifende Veränderungen. Während in der physischen Geographie vielfach datenanalytische Effizienzgewinne im Vordergrund stehen, entfaltet sich in der Humangeographie eine kontroverse Debatte über die ethischen und didaktischen Implikationen des KI-Einsatzes. Zwischen opportunistischer Instrumentalisierung und grundsätzlicher Ablehnung oszillieren die Positionen innerhalb des Fachs, was eine gemeinsame Orientierungsfindung erschwert. Doch genau diese Orientierungen sind notwendig, um Studierende dazu zu befähigen, die neuen Technologien kompetent, kritisch und verantwortungsvoll zu nutzen. Unser Vortrag stellt den Entwurf für eine Lehrveranstaltung vor, die sich dieser Herausforderung stellt und bereits in zwei Durchläufen mit Studierenden der Geographie an der Uni Bonn erprobt wurde. Ziel des Formats ist es, einen Raum für Reflexion, Erprobung und Einordnung von KI-gestütztem Arbeiten zu schaffen, ohne dabei in naive Technikgläubigkeit oder pauschale Ablehnung zu verfallen. Wir argumentieren, dass Hochschullehre weder auf strikte Verbote noch auf unkritische Befürwortung setzen sollte. Lehrende müssen sich mit der Funktionsweise, Reichweite und Begrenztheit unterschiedlicher KI-Modelle vertraut machen, um Studierende fundiert anleiten zu können. Gleichzeitig erfordert der produktive Einsatz von KI eine Neubewertung etablierter Leistungsindikatoren und eine Weiterentwicklung dessen, was in geographischen Studiengängen als wissenschaftlich hochwertiger Output gilt. Die durch KI angestoßene Transformation ist nicht nur eine technische, sondern eine tiefgreifend erkenntnistheoretische und didaktische Herausforderung – unser Beitrag will einen Impuls geben, dieser differenziert und gestaltend zu begegnen.

While some theories diagnose an abstract, unified capitalism driven by digital technologies and global transformations, a critical countercurrent has emerged, particularly in geography. This perspective calls for understanding digital technologies as socio-spatially embedded and argues that a "terrestrial grounding" of digital technologies is required to render their material and concrete dimensions tangible. Accordingly, embeddedness is proposed as an antidote to capitalocentric narratives, instead emphasizing the potential to shape digitalization. In our paper, we reflect critically on this turn by conducting a systematic literature review of the current literature exploring digital capitalism through concepts of embeddedness. Despite the heterogeneity of topics and research approaches in our corpus, we identify common discursive positions in relation to the concept and its analytical implications. Ranging from affirmative-emphatic, agnostic-analytical to reflexive-critical stances, these uses harbor distinct risks for epistemic fragmentation in interdisciplinary research on digital capitalism. They vary with respect to the role of spatiality and lead to normative implications with respect to the discussion of potentials for change, agency and regulation. We then discuss synergies between these stances and point towards future fields for a geographic contribution to theories of digital capitalism. Reminded of the old debate regarding variation vs. variegation (Peck/Theodore 2007), we close our paper with a reflection on the need for a perspective that recognizes the dialectic of decentralization and centralization shared by digital capitalism throughout its various embedded instantiations.

A shift can be observed in global climate and environmental policy from the end of the 2010s: from the economic valuation of ecosystems in the form of separate “ecosystem services” - understood as the ability of non-human actors to purify water, sequester carbon dioxide, or serve as a reservoir for genetic variation, among other things – towards comprehensive natural capital accounting, in which various aspects of non-human environments are included in one integrated valuation scheme. This goes hand in hand with the need to collect more and different data: Area-wide monitoring and surveillance systems are being set up to provide large amounts of quantifiable, digital and spatialized data on a regular basis or in real time; increasingly, AI-based programs are being used to analyse these and compare different usage options to identify the one with the highest “value”. Using the example of a World Bank-financed app that uses AI to carry out such landscape assessments, this contribution analyzes, from the perspective of political ecology and science and technology studies, how these specifically produce and change the value of landscapes, which practices, infrastructures, temporal and spatial relations they are based on, and what concrete effects they have on the use and and the physical-material appearance of landscapes in the future.

Started as a Google spin-out, augmented reality mobile games company Niantic is on its way to become a prominent developer of geospatial technologies. Just recently, the company announced the development of what it calls a Large Geospatial Model, aiming to combine technologies previously developed primarily for their in-house gaming development with machine learning and artificial intelligence. This strategic realignment was accompanied by the divestiture of its gaming division and the establishment of a new company, Niantic Spatial.

Niantic’s pivot is emblematic of a broader momentum – across public and private sectors, multiple initiatives are now probing the possibilities of GeoAI. A growing number of actors – from established geospatial companies such as Esri to national government agencies – are increasingly engaging with technologies of GeoAI for analysing and aggregating large amounts of geodata with a plethora of other data sources.

While the growing attention around geospatial machine learning and GeoAI is certainly tied to the current hype surrounding artificial intelligence, it also points to more profound transformations in the production, operationalisation and politicisation of geospatial knowledge. Behind promises of technological progress in spatial planning, it raises deeper questions about the politics and power of spatial knowledge. In order to examine these questions, this research aims at critically enquiring Niantic’s endeavours exemplarily for the wider evolution of geospatial analysis.

To examine these dynamics more closely, this research takes Niantic's public communication around the development of its Large Geospatial Model as a point of departure. By analysing how the company frames this technological shift, the aim is to critically interrogate the imaginaries, promises, and silences surrounding LGMs, GeoAI and other forms of algorithmic geographies. This analysis is situated within the broader context of digital geographies and critical cartographies, engaging with questions of spatial knowledge production, the socio-political and socio-technical implications of geospatial technologies.

Digitale Plattformen prägen zunehmend die alltägliche Organisation von Sorge- und Versorgungsarbeit in privaten Haushalten. So erschafft die Kommodifizierung sozialer Reproduktion mit den Plattformarbeiter:innen nicht nur eine neue Dienstleistungsschicht, sondern verschiebt auch die Bedingungen, unter denen reproduktive Arbeit als „wertvoll“ verstanden wird. Plattforminfrastrukturen wie algorithmisches Ranking und Bewertungen bestimmen, wer sichtbar und buchbar ist – sie objektivieren und sortieren die Sorgetätigen (Mateescu & Ticona 2020). Gleichzeitig reagieren die Plattformarbeiter:innen auf diese Anforderungen und transferieren sie in analoge Praktiken. In meinem Beitrag untersuche ich empirisch, wie in der plattformvermittelten Reproduktionsarbeit zwischen digitaler Performance und analoger Praxis Wert hergestellt, ausgehandelt und erhalten wird.

Historisch als das Andere der Produktion konstruiert, bewegt sich reproduktive Arbeit zwischen bezahlt und unbezahlt, formell und informell, zwischen affektiver Aufwertung und ökonomischer Entwertung durch Naturalisierung (Villa 2020). Für die symbolische und damit ökonomische Bewertung von Reproduktionsarbeit schaffen Plattforminfrastrukturen neue Rahmenbedingungen. Die Arbeiter:innen sind einerseits gezwungen sich den Narrativen, Sichtbarkeitsregimen und Marktlogiken wie hohe Responsivität, positive Bewertungen und der Inszenierung als Helfer:in unterzuordnen, andererseits eignen sie sich diese subjektiv an: der passende Radius wird eingestellt, die eigene Care-Ethik betont oder bestimmte Haushalte abgelehnt. Das Wechselspiel von digitaler Selbstperformance und analoger Beziehungsarbeit wird zur Voraussetzung für die Kund:innenakquise und damit zum zentralen Medium der In-Wert-Setzung der eigenen Arbeitskraft. Auf Basis von 22 problemzentrierten Interviews mit Plattformarbeiter:innen auf Helpling, betreut.de, Flink, Lieferando und myhammer sollen Modi der Wertherstellung erarbeitet werden: durch affektive Performanz in Form von Emotionalisierung und (Hyper-)Personalisierung, durch professionelle Praxis wie etablierte Routineabläufe und Zertifizierung und durch Selektion und Selbstpositionierung, etwa durch gezielte Auswahl der Kund:innen und Abgrenzungsarbeit. Ergänzt wird die Analyse durch digitale Artefakte wie Profile und Bewertungen sowie Audiotagebücher der Arbeiter:innen.

Domestic cleaning is historically shaped by socio-economic inequalities and precarious employment conditions, but in the age of platforms also by digital infrastructures that structure how encounters between cleaners and clients unfold. These platforms extract profit from the mediation of paid domestic labour while withdrawing from responsibility for the conditions under which it is performed. Situated in the private home, a space historically constructed as feminised, informal, and politically neutral, and thus largely shielded from public oversight and regulation, these encounters are marked by asymmetrical power relations along lines of gender, race, class, and migration status.

Drawing on interviews with both cleaners and clients in Vienna, Austria, I explore how platform-facilitated digital visibility does not offer protection or bargaining power but instead intensifies the power asymmetries of domestic labour. Cleaners must present themselves online on the platform along cultural norms of domesticity, femininity and trustworthiness in order to secure work, while clients remain largely anonymous online and protected by the spatial and social boundaries of their own homes. Once contact is established, cleaners enter these private spaces under precarious conditions, with limited information and no institutional safeguards, often navigating implicit expectations, racialised judgments, and emotional strain alone.

By situating these dynamics within a feminist and intersectional framework, I argue that platform-mediated domestic labour does not merely digitise pre-existing informal arrangements, but reconfigures them in ways that deepen workers’ exposure and dependence. Platforms profit from outsourcing risk to those made most vulnerable by structural inequalities—rendering the private sphere and social reproduction as central sites of extraction of digital capitalism.

Das bidt-geförderte Projekt [ROBIN](https://www.bidt.digital/forschungsprojekt/resilienz-durch-burgergetriebene-innovation-mithilfe-digitaler-plattformen/) ist ein Kooperationsprojekt der Universitäten Bamberg (Geographie) und Erlangen-Nürnberg (Wirtschaftsinformatik) mit der gGmbH fortiss (Informatik). Ein Ziel des Projektes ist es, eine digitale Plattform zu entwickeln, die bürger\*innenbetriebene (soziale) Innovation fördert und ebenso Resilienz in Zeiten multipler Krisen stärkt. Die Entwicklung erfolgt dabei iterativ und basiert auf regelmäßigen (Re)Evaluationen mit Akteuren der Zivilgesellschaft.

Dabei steht ein partizipativer Entwicklungsprozess im Vordergrund, der sich an den Bedürfnissen der Nutzenden orientiert – und sich bewusst entgegen der zunehmenden Privatisierung von Plattformen und Anwendungen positioniert. Hier rückt die Frage in den Fokus, wie digitale Infrastrukturen demokratisch, transparent und gemeinwohlorientiert gesteuert werden können. Kurz: Es geht um Governance digitaler Plattformen als kollektive Aushandlung von Verantwortung und Teilhabe.

Das Projekt sieht die Plattform als common good an und untersucht ebenso, welche Rolle sie in sozialen, bürger\*innenbetriebenen Innovationen einnehmen kann. Dabei wird Wert nicht nur ökonomisch verstanden, sondern ebenso als gesellschaftlich und ökologisch konstituiert. Die Plattform ist ein Instrument zur Gestaltung einer „nachhaltigen“ und partizipativ gestalteten Zukunft. Ihr könnte also vorgeworfen werden, selbst wertbehaftet/wertend zu sein. (Womit sich auch eine grundlegende Frage nach wertebasiertem Handeln allgemein und in der Wissenschaft stellt.)

Ein weiterer Fokus liegt aus der Analyse von hybriden Allianzen (/Netzwerken) verschiedener Akteursgruppen, die im Kontext der digitalen Plattformen entstehen und gestärkt werden – insbesondere zwischen Zivilgesellschaft, Politik/Verwaltung und Wirtschaft. Dabei gehen wir darauf ein, wie digitale Infrastrukturen, bzw. insbesondere die Plattform hybride Allianzen zwischen verschiedenen Akteursgruppen ermöglichen und verändern können.

Der Beitrag bietet konkrete Einblicke in die fachübergreifende Zusammenarbeit der beteiligten wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen und in Übersetzungsprozesse zwischen Wissenschaft/Technikentwicklung und Zivilgesellschaft/anderen Akteuren. Weiter zeigt er auf, wie Governance mitgedacht und mitgestaltet werden kann und welche Herausforderungen sich dabei ergeben.

The territorialization of digital labor platforms has reshaped value regimes by transferring control over value extraction to algorithms and digital infrastructures. This process is intensified in economies marked by structural informality, such as Brazil, where workers face not only social insecurity but also a lack of accurate data about their own activities and the absence of effective regulation. While public research institutions have reported poor working conditions and low earnings despite long hours, studies commissioned by platforms often portray more favorable scenarios. A methodological dispute has therefore emerged over how to measure the value of labor on digital platforms, directly influencing the ongoing public debate on regulation in Brazil. This contribution presents the development and preliminary findings of Meu Corre App, a mobile application co-created since 2020 in dialogue with delivery workers in Brazil. The app supports individual financial organization and generates unprecedented aggregate data on platform-based labor. Built from qualitative research in WhatsApp groups, shared mapping, and interviews, it was developed as a form of counter-digital infrastructure. It is guided by the logic of reterritorialization, as conceptualized by Haesbaert, referring to efforts to reclaim spatial control in response to algorithmic despotism exercised by platform companies. Launched in 2024, the app currently has around 6,000 registered users. Data analysis has shown lower earnings than those reported in other studies using conventional methodologies, due to the app’s capacity for continuous and precise data collection. The project thus intervenes in contemporary disputes over value—economically, by providing visibility into indicators such as earnings per hour, per kilometer, and idle time; and politically, by fostering financial awareness and producing data that had been controlled exclusively by platforms. Grounded in workers’ concrete experiences, Meu Corre App seeks to generate indicators that support the defense of labor rights and challenge dominant regimes of value measurement.