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1. The Challenges of Crowd Workers in Rural and Urban America

   Saviaga, C; Li, Y; Hanrahan, B; Bigham, J; Savage, S. (January 2020, Human computation)

   null (Ed.)

   Crowd work has the potential of helping the financial recovery of regions traditionally plagued by a lack of economic opportunities, e.g., rural areas. However, we currently have limited information about the challenges facing crowd workers from rural and super rural areas as they struggle to make a living through crowd work sites. This paper examines the challenges and advantages of rural and super rural Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) crowd workers and contrasts them with those of workers from urban areas. Based on a survey of 421 crowd workers from differing geographic regions in the U.S., we identified how across regions, people struggled with being onboarded into crowd work. We uncovered that despite the inequalities and barriers, rural workers tended to be striving more in micro-tasking than their urban counterparts. We also identified cultural traits, relating to time dimension and individualism, that offer us an insight into crowd workers and the necessary qualities for them to succeed on gig platforms. We finish by providing design implications based on our findings to create more inclusive crowd work platforms and tools. 

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2. Towards fair and pro-social employment of digital pieceworkers for sourcing machine learning training data

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3516384  

   Rothschild, Annabel; Booker, Justin; Davoll, Christa; Hill, Jessica; Ivey, Venise and; Rydal Shapiro, Ben; DiSalvo, Betsy (January 2022, CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts)

   This work contributes to just and pro-social treatment of digital pieceworkers ("crowd collaborators") by reforming the handling of crowd-sourced labor in academic venues. With the rise in automation, crowd collaborators' treatment requires special consideration, as the system often dehumanizes crowd collaborators as components of the “crowd” [41]. Building off efforts to (proxy-)unionize crowd workers and facilitate employment protections on digital piecework platforms, we focus on employers: academic requesters sourcing machine learning (ML) training data. We propose a cover sheet to accompany submission of work that engages crowd collaborators for sourcing (or labeling) ML training data. The guidelines are based on existing calls from worker organizations (e.g., Dynamo [28]); professional data workers in an alternative digital piecework organization; and lived experience as requesters and workers on digital piecework platforms. We seek feedback on the cover sheet from the ACM community 

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3. Making waves: The benefits and challenges of responsibly implementing wastewater-based surveillance for rural communities

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2023.121095  

   Cohen, Alasdair; Vikesland, Peter; Pruden, Amy; Krometis, Leigh-Anne; Lee, Lisa M; Darling, Amanda; Yancey, Michelle; Helmick, Meagan; Singh, Rekha; Gonzalez, Raul; et al (February 2024, Water Research)

   The sampling and analysis of sewage for pathogens and other biomarkers offers a powerful tool for monitoring and understanding community health trends and potentially predicting disease outbreaks. Since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of wastewater-based testing for public health surveillance has increased markedly. However, these efforts have focused on urban and peri-urban areas. In most rural regions of the world, healthcare service access is more limited than in urban areas, and rural public health agencies typically have less disease outcome surveillance data than their urban counterparts. The potential public health benefits of wastewater-based surveillance for rural communities are therefore substantial - though so too are the methodological and ethical challenges. For many rural communities, population dynamics and insufficient, aging, and inadequately maintained wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure present obstacles to the reliable and responsible implementation of wastewater-based surveillance. Practitioner observations and research findings indicate that for many rural systems, typical implementation approaches for wastewater-based surveillance will not yield sufficiently reliable or actionable results. We discuss key challenges and potential strategies to address them. However, to support and expand the implementation of responsible, reliable, and ethical wastewater-based surveillance for rural communities, best practice guidelines and standards are needed. 

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4. A Sociocultural Explanation of Internet-Enabled Work in Rural Regions

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3443705  

   Kahn, Zoe; Burrell, Jenna (July 2021, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction)

   This article draws on ethnographic research in three rural places in the Western United States to understand how rural workers incorporate the Internet into their work practices. We find two key, divergent types of work in rural areas that leverage the Internet: (1) telework and (2) work to market and sell goods and services online. We consider why these two forms of Internet-enabled work are pursued by different segments of the rural population, attending to the socio-demographic variation within and between these two broad categories. Some key differences include whether workers are urban transplants or rural-originating, in “white-collar” or “blue-collar” occupations, and whether they are men or women. We argue that deficit framings that focus on inadequate infrastructure or absent skills are insufficient to understand such patterns of differentiated use. Instead a sociocultural explanation is needed: one that draws connections between work cultures, occupational values, skills, and practices. 

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5. Protective Factors in the Context of Successful Aging in Urban-Dwelling Alaska Native Elders

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-023-09493-3  

   Kim, Steffi M; Lewis, Jordan P (March 2024, Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology)

   Successful aging in rural Alaska communities has been established as a characteristic best described by reaching “Eldership,” conveying reverence and respect from the community and implying leadership responsibilities. Most Alaska Native (AN) Elders believe that aging successfully or aging well happens within their home communities. However, limited rural resources lead Elders to relocate to urban settings. While protective factors supporting aging well in rural communities have been established, little is known about which factors support aging well after relocation to an urban setting. This exploratory, qualitative, community-based participatory research study explored AN Elder’s (ages 48–84) experiences comparing successful aging within four rural Alaska communities and of Elders who relocated from a rural to an urban community. Thirteen rural-based Elders and 12 urban-based Elders semi-structured interviews were compared to explore how successful aging was experienced similarly and differently in rural and urban settings. To age well in urban Alaska, access to health care services, family, and community engagement were essential. The main challenges for urban Elders involved establishing a sense of community, intergenerational involvement, and the ability to continue traditional ways of living. This research identified challenges, similarities, and differences in aging well in an urban community. The findings of this study inform practices, services, and policies to improve existing urban services and initiate needed urban services to foster successful aging after relocation from remote rural areas into urban communities in Alaska. 

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