Understanding the Nature of Tasks in Crowdwork Platforms

The paper analyses the nature of tasks in crowdwork platforms (Schmidt, 2017). Despite the rapid uptake of crowdwork, the nature of crowdwork tasks – their complexity and interdependence, the opportunities for discretion, creativity, and application of workers’ expertise they provide – is poorly understood. In particular, there is paucity of empirical research examining the nature of crowdwork tasks from the perspective of crowdworkers. This paper identifies how crowdworkers characterise the tasks they undertake on the platforms. Furthermore, we compare the perspectives of crowdworkers and ‘conventional’ employees to identify the similarities and differences in the perceived nature of tasks within these different work settings. Finally, we identify an indicative typology of crowdwork tasks.