Navigating the empty shell: the role of articulation work in platform structures

Abstract This article explores platform workers’ strategies for producing sustainable, quality services within platform structures that simultaneously over- and under-determine their work. We present findings from interviews with U.S.-based mental health professionals (n = 48) working on teletherapy platforms. These therapists describe navigating both the presence of platformic controls and the absence of features supporting professional best practices and regulatory requirements. We describe this absence as the “empty shell” characteristic of platforms and argue that it is a central technique through which platforms create scale. Our findings detail the communicative strategies therapists employ to navigate the empty shell and provide quality care to their clients. These strategies can be seen as a form of “articulation work,” a concept drawn from the sociology of work. Attending to articulation work in an emerging platform labor context, such as teletherapy, contributes to our understanding of the politics of platforms. Lay Summary In this article, we share findings from interviews with 48 U.S.-based mental health therapists working for telehealth platforms. We spoke to them about their experiences with providing therapy through the platform. Therapists described how telehealth platforms not only tightly controlled some parts of their work—but also left out key features or functionalities. Without these, therapists struggled to adhere to professional norms and regulatory requirements. We describe this lack of key features and functionalities as the “empty shell” aspect of platforms. We argue that platform businesses are able to operate at a scale not only by using technical controls like algorithms but also by designing the platform as a kind of empty shell. This requires therapists and other platform workers to do extra work to fill the empty shell. We use the term “articulation work” to describe how therapists went around platform controls and beyond limited platform structures to do their work. We argue that it is important to study articulation work across different kinds of platform business models, industries and professional contexts. Examining the empty shell structures of platforms and the articulation work that fills it helps us to better understand both platform companies’ and platform workers’ experiences.