Communicating Precarity Discursive Constructions of AI Data Training Labour on Reddit

Sammanfattning

As AI systems become more integrated into daily life, the human labor behind their development often remains unseen. Workers who label data, assess outputs, and train models operate through digital platforms that lack transparency. These platforms use algorithms for task assignments, performance assessments, and account management, raising questions about how workers understand and respond to platform governance without clear communication.While research has examined the structure of platform labor and algorithmic control, less attention has been paid to how workers make sense of these conditions. This study investigates how AI data training workers interpret platform governance through discourse in online communities.Drawing on folk theories of algorithms and the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO), it views worker discourse as distributed sensemaking. Analyzing 30 Reddit threads using thematic coding and framing theory, the study identifies four themes: structural opacity, economic uncertainty, emotional responses, and challenging epistemics. Workers share experiences and develop explanations, a process called “folk reconstruction.”These findings contribute to organizational communication scholarship by demonstrating that workers' experience and interpretation of algorithmic governance are co-constituted through worker discourse, highlighting the active role of workers in producing knowledge under conditions of institutional opacity