Social Networking without Social Class? Examining Trust between Low-Income Job Seekers and Middle-Class Employers on Bab

1. SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? THE ROLE OF TRUST BETWEEN LOW-INCOME JOB SEEKERS AND MIDDLE-CLASS EMPLOYERS FOR THE INDIAN JOB-PORTAL babajob.com IAMCR 2015 – DIGITAL DIVIDE WORKING GROUP MONTREAL JULY 12th - 16th 2015 Anil Kunnel

2. BABAJOB‘S SOCIAL NETWORKING PORTAL SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? • Babajob is the first site that tries to connect low-income-job seekers and (private) employers for jobs as drivers, maids, cooks or housekeepers through a collaborative social network approach • Babajob was founded in 2007 by Sean Blagsvedt (former Microsoft Research), based in Bangalore (Bengaluru) • uses their website, voice services, SMS-texting and hired mediators to connect users

3. LOW-INCOME EMPLOYMENT SECTOR SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? „I mean, literally, I read [Krishna’s] paper, I thought ‘wow’ if we had just ‘LinkedIn’ for the village that would be fine.’” (Sean Blagsvedt, Founder) • Babajob’sapproach is based on A. Krishna‘s research on poverty which claims that people get out of poverty through better job information in the low-income job sector • According to Krishna’s research, poverty is a dynamic, fluent concept: „Contacts providing information are critical for most cases of successful diversification. [...] [T]he availability of an external contact, a friend or more often a relative already established in the city, was critical for a households’ successful break from poverty.“ (Krishna 2004: 130) • Usually, there are only informal ways of finding a new job, mostly by using personal contacts • Babajobattemptstoofferinformationalefficiencyforbothjobseekersandemployers:

4. “I have told many friends, but they are not helping me out. And it also takes almost two, three months to find a job through them. So I contacted an agent to find me work. My friends they take every job that is good, they take it themselves. Whichever job is bad, they tell me.“ (Job Seeker)

5. GROUNDED THEORY APPROACH SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? • RESEARCH QUESTIONS – BASIC EXPLORATION • How does Babajob get their low-income job seekers online? • How do two socially different groups connect online in a network? • How efficient is the communication in the network? • What is the role of trust and distrust between users? • QUALITATIVE STUDY • visit to Bangalore, observation of local factors such as the milieu of job seekers and employers and the daily routine at Babajob • first interview phase with Babajob staff and experts • Babajobstaff (7), employment sector NGOs and technology researchers (5), job seekers test group (5) • second interview phase with network participants: • job seekers Ulsoor district (7), job seekers Indiranagar district (7), employers (6)

6. INTERVIEW RESULTS SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? THE GROUP OF JOB SEEKERS IS VERY DIVERSE „So you have people who don’t have phones, who are living in sub-existential living conditions. Maybe you have a mother who is working as a maid, the father is drunk. The kids are still in school, in government schools without fees, so she doesn’t have to pay fees. And they just manage. You live from your salary to your salary. They are always living on loans[...] it’s a vicious cycle.“ „Probably a similar family whose kids are outgrown, they are also working, they are able to contribute. Or where husband and wife are both economically viable, they’re both working and a little more comfortable. They are able to educate their children, because both parents are working. Therefore their daughter or son can work in an office. Their kids will probably be IT-students. The generations then get better and better.“(Babajob staff)

7. INTERVIEW RESULTS SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? THE GROUP OF EMPLOYERS ARE EQUALLY DIVERSE „[The employers are] people with disposable income, people who work, where both partners work. People who have kids. And people who have a broader worldview, who travel abroad a lot. It doesn’t bother them to do something online. It’s not something that they have to learn how to switch on a computer.” “[On the other side,] [y]ou could still have a family, say two kids, mother, father, both are working. Working at mid- to low-level jobs, as in an office, which means that he might do something like data-entry. He’s just handling day-to-day accounts. His wife may be a secretary somewhere. Together they might be earning 20.000 to 30.000 Rs. a month. 8.000 to 10.000 for a rent, another 5.000 on transport, the remaining on your kids’ fees, it’s a squeeze.“ (Babajob staff)

8. INTERVIEW RESULTS SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? INDICATORS OF A DIGITAL DIVIDE IN ACCESS TO BABAJOB‘S NETWORK * compare van de Wijngaert 2005

9. TRUST AND DISTRUST IN BABAJOB‘S NETWORK SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? MOST OF THE INTERVIEWEES EXPERIENCED SOME KIND OF FRAUD, THERE IS A HUGE AMMOUNT OF SOCIAL DISTRUST „I’ve had a maid who used to rob stuff. She stole clothes from the terrace and her children used to collect all my Dad’s new shirts. I’ve had maids who just sat and watched TV the whole day, you know. My sister’s diaper was only changed once or twice a day, when ideally it should be changed nine to eight times. Things like that. When you try and confront them, we don’t get any response. They say ‚no, but we’ve changed the diaper.’ Stuff like that.“ (Employer) „Now I work at a house on the opposite road which pays a thousand Rs. and I cook a little bit and most of the time I clean the house. [...] I got the job through my sister in law. I’m looking only for a better job because the rent itself is 1.000 Rs. So what will I eat if all my earnings go for the rent? [...] It’s 1.000 and I pay 1.000. So I’ve got nothing to eat, that’s why I look for a job.“ (Job seeker)

10. TRUST AND DISTRUST IN BABAJOB‘S NETWORK SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? THE TRUST OR DISTRUST BETWEEN INDIVIVUAL USERS INFLUENCE THE OVERALL COMMUNICATION STRUCTURES OF BABAJOB‘S NETWORK „Trust or lack of trust may be a key factor in determining whether online relationships will thrive and move to deeper levels, providing reliable social support, or whether they will remain weak ties that provide little benefit to the individual and do the little to build social capital.“ (Green 2007: 43) „In terms of community, social capital makes the difference between individual connectivity and community connectivity. Social capital benefits include the ability to trust network members, to have common language and to depend on network-based mechanisms to manage behaviours.“ (Haythornthwaite 2007: 129)

11. TRUST AND DISTRUST IN BABAJOB‘S NETWORK SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? trust and distrust networkcommunication relational trust is the assumption of convergent mutual expectations about future conduct in social relationships, a converging shared identity leads to confidence relational distrust is the assumption of divergent mutual expectations about future conduct in social relationships, a diverging shared identity leads to scepticism

12. CONVERGING EXPECTATIONS SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? DIMENSIONS OF RELATIONAL TRUST AND DISTRUST IN BABAJOB‘S NETWORK • behavioral dimension (experience of interaction) • users integrate their past experiences into their reception • salary negotiations are a big problem if the wages are not standardized • only a few incentives for continuous use of Babajob • cognitive dimension (trustworthiness) • reputation system is still very random (ratings, uploaded references…) • social connections (friends of friends) not really working • no real standards for profile use and personal content (image-building strategies) • affective dimension (sense of belonging) • Babajob is not perceived as a community, but rather an agency or search engine • no interest in altruistic goals • difficult to develop the social capital necessary for an online network

13. CONCLUSION SOCIAL NETWORKING WITHOUT SOCIAL CLASS? TRUST CAN BE ONLY BUILT IN A SOCIAL NETWORK IF IT FEATURES CONVERGENT AND FORMALIZED EXPECTATIONS AMONG ITS USERS • the trust and distrust between users influence the general structural stability of Babajob’s social online network on a meso level • building trust in a network is a multi-dimensional venture, communicated on a behavioral, cognitive and affective level • extensive work needs to be put into the interaction design in order to build shared identities and use them as „social glue“ • interactional rules and routines need to be established and because of the high diversity of users, a lot of the informal communication needs to be formalized • connectivity and its relation to trust, participation and access should be further considered in digital divide research, especially with diverse user groups

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