Each year a small portion of AoIR conference fees go toward several travel scholarships for junior scholars to attend the conference. We want to recognize our scholarship recipients and share with you a little bit about them and their research interests.
Who are you?
I am Godofredo Ramizo Jr., a 3rd year DPhil student from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, under the supervision of Prof. Vili Lehdonvirta and Prof Eric T. Meyer. I study the platform economy, such as ride-hailing platforms in Southeast Asian megacities. I have published public engagement pieces with CNN and New Naratif on these topics. I have also been invited as a resource person for the Philippine government regarding the regulation of the platform economy. I became an AoIR member this year.
Where are you from?
I am originally from the Philippines. Thanks to merit scholarships, I have done postgraduate studies in London (University of Westminster), Brisbane (University of Queensland), and now at Oxford under the Oxford Clarendon Scholarship.
What is your current area of study?
My research is on the platform economy and its implications in the Global South, with ride-hailing platforms in Southeast Asian megacities as my empirical focus. Through interviews, document analysis, and immersive fieldwork, I investigate the impact of platform solutions on users’ ways of doing and thinking, as well as on institutional issues such as regulation and governance reform.
Describe the research you will present at AoIR 2019
At the AoIR Conference 2019, I discuss how surge-pricing (or dynamic pricing) affects trust toward ride-hailing platforms in Manila. There is well corroborated distrust against dynamic pricing and yet this distrust has negligible impact on overall trust for the said platform. The novelty of the findings is that they reveal mechanisms behind users’ pro-technology biases, which explain why trust in technological solutions may persist even when besieged by distrust. The findings are important because they have real world implications: With the help of these pro-technology biases, technology actors may inspire trust from the public on less than meritorious grounds, and firmly grip users’ trust even as the latter begin to harbor healthy skepticism over fairness and transparency.
Have you presented at AoIR in the past? If yes, what has been your experience? If #AoIR2019 Brisbane is your first AoIR conference, what made you choose this conference? What do you expect from it?
This is my first time joining an AoIR Conference, which I believe is one of the most important and most focused conferences in the field of internet research. I hope to get to know academics and students during the conference, and possibly plant seeds for future collaboration. I also hope to share my research, receive feedback, and confer with other students and seasoned researchers about the common issues we encounter in multi-method internet research. I hope to be inspired by the interesting work of researchers from all over the world. I am thrilled to be part of AoIR in Brisbane, and I very much appreciate the AoIR’s support.
