Digital industrial accidents: A case study of the mental distress of platform workers in South Korea

Abstract

© 2021 Akademikerförbundet SSR (ASSR) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.The increase in the number of platform workers has led to active discussions on the various difficulties they face. Existing studies on their work-related accidents have focused on physical, traffic-related accidents in offline places. However, platform workers are more likely to suffer from psychological stress or illnesses while performing immaterial and cognitive labour in the virtual space. Through in-depth interviews with 30 platform workers in South Korea, this study investigated platform workers mental distress and identified five common psychological problems: (a) stress from real-time assessment in public space; (b) exhaustion from working without work-life boundaries; (c) infringement of privacy through exposure of private life; (d) verbal abuse in non-face-to-face relations; and (e) isolation from working alone. In doing so, this study seeks to define the mental difficulties of platform workers as digital industrial accidents and asserts the need to establish a new social security system for the digital economy.