journal.kommunikation-medien / The Sharing Economy From a promise for a bright future to a critical view on the present : Introduction to core competences II

As rapid ICT revolution and the wide spread and adoption of digital tools by the population at large are continuously reshaping whole areas of human activity, technological developments play an increasing role in producing and steering socio-economic change. One of the areas undergoing serious disruption is economics, with consumer-producer dynamics as its core component. The digital networked environment is restructuring interactions and relations between individuals, social as well as economic, and creating new ways of managing and exchanging resources. This enables new models of production and consumption, based on individual engagement, loose collaborations, reutilization and redistribution of goods, etc. This paper we address the “sharing economy” as one of the most debated con-cepts emerged with the increasing embeddedness of digital technologies in everyday life. We offer a systematic overview of the existing literature on the topic: starting from early works with a historical perspective on the origins, mechanisms and potential of this mode of social production, to later theories, which assess its developments, impacts and manifes-tations in daily life, and concluding with more recent works, which adopt a rather critical perspective. In these, the shortcomings and failures of sharing economy are presented and discussed, along with possible solutions and suggestions for future courses of development. We conclude with a set of policy recommendations on how to manage and regulate this new sector, balancing between encouraging innovation and ensuring a safe and secure environment for the users.(VLID)267565