The complexities of platforms are increasingly at odds with the narrow legal and economic concepts in which their governance is grounded. This article aims to analyze platformization through the ...metaphorical lens of a tree to make sense of information ecosystems as hierarchical and interdependent structures. The layered shape of the tree draws attention to the dynamics of power concentration: vertical integration, infrastructuralization, and cross-sectorization. Next, the metaphor helps to revision the current patchwork of European regulatory frameworks, addressing the power asymmetry between citizens and the data-driven systems through which their daily practices are governed. Finally, the platformization tree serves to identify points of intervention that may inform European regulatory bodies and policy-makers to act as agents of change. Taking a holistic approach to platformization, this visual metaphor may inspire a set of principles that reshapes the platform ecosystem in the interest of society and the common good.
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This book studies the rise of social media in the first decade of the twenty-first century, up until 2012. It provides both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of networking ...services in the context of a changing ecosystem of connective media. Such history is needed to understand how the intricate constellation of platforms profoundly affects our experience of online sociality. In a short period of time, services like Facebook, YouTube and many others have come to deeply penetrate our daily habits of communication and creative production. While most sites started out as amateur-driven community platforms, half a decade later they have turned into large corporations that do not just facilitate user connectedness, but have become global information and data mining companies extracting and exploiting user connectivity. Offering a dual analytical prism to examine techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of social media, the author dissects five major platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia. Each of these microsystems occupies a distinct position in the larger ecosystem of connective media, and yet, their underlying mechanisms for coding interfaces, steering users, filtering content, governance and business models rely on shared ideological principles. Reconstructing the premises on which these platforms are built, this study highlights how norms for online interaction and communication gradually changed. “Sharing,” “friending,” “liking,” “following,” “trending,” and “favoriting” have come to denote online practices imbued with specific technological and economic meanings. This process of normalization is part of a larger political and ideological battle over information control in an online world where everything is bound to become “social.”
Understanding Social Media Logic Van Dijck, José; Poell, Thomas
Media and communication,
01/2013, Volume:
1, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Over the past decade, social media platforms have penetrated deeply into the mechanics of everyday life, affecting people's informal interactions, as well as institutional structures and professional ...routines. Far from being neutral platforms for everyone, social media have changed the conditions and rules of social interaction. In this article, we examine the intricate dynamic between social media platforms, mass media, users, and social institutions by calling attention to social media logic-the norms, strategies, mechanisms, and economies-underpinning its dynamics. This logic will be considered in light of what has been identified as mass media logic, which has helped spread the media's powerful discourse outside its institutional boundaries. Theorizing social media logic, we identify four grounding principles-programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication-and argue that these principles become increasingly entangled with mass media logic. The logic of social media, rooted in these grounding principles and strategies, is gradually invading all areas of public life. Besides print news and broadcasting, it also affects law and order, social activism, politics, and so forth. Therefore, its sustaining logic and widespread dissemination deserve to be scrutinized in detail in order to better understand its impact in various domains. Concentrating on the tactics and strategies at work in social media logic, we reassess the constellation of power relationships in which social practices unfold, raising questions such as: How does social media logic modify or enhance existing mass media logic? And how is this new media logic exported beyond the boundaries of (social or mass) media proper? The underlying principles, tactics, and strategies may be relatively simple to identify, but it is much harder to map the complex connections between plat - forms that distribute this logic: users that employ them, technologies that drive them, economic structures that scaffold them, and institutional bodies that incorporate them.
How does platformization work as vehicle for the integration of public online education into a private global digital infrastructure? And how can education technologies ('edtech') be governed at ...various levels to benefit the public good? In this article, we examine online environments in primary schools in The Netherlands, a traditionally strong public-school system, where platformization has substantially impacted the precarious balance between private and public interests. Mapping the Dutch edtech landscape, we trace how the integration of digital learning platforms and learning management systems into digital learning environments are propelled by two complementary yet competing strategies: interoperability and intraoperability. We argue that the latter challenges the first. Securing education's public interests necessitates a coordinated governance effort at the sectoral, national and European levels.
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This article analyzes deplatformization as an implied governance strategy by major tech companies to detoxify the platform ecosystem of radical content while consolidating their power as designers, ...operators, and governors of that same ecosystem. Deplatformization is different from deplatforming: it entails a systemic effort to push back encroaching radical right-wing platforms to the fringes of the ecosystem by denying them the infrastructural services needed to function online. We identify several deplatformization strategies, using Gab as an example of a platform that survived its relegation and which subsequently tried to build an alternative at the edge of the mainstream ecosystem. Evaluating deplatformization in terms of governance, the question that arises is who is responsible for cleansing the ecosystem: corporations, states, civil society actors, or all three combined? Understanding the implied governance of deplatformization is imperative to assess the higher stakes in future debates concerning Internet governability.
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'Collaborative culture', 'mass creativity' and 'co-creation' appear to be contagious buzzwords that are rapidly infecting economic and cultural discourse on Web 2.0. Allegedly, peer production models ...will replace opaque, top-down business models, yielding to transparent, democratic structures where power is in the shared hands of responsible companies and skilled, qualified users. Manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) and 'We-Think' (Leadbeater, 2007) argue collective culture to be the basis for digital commerce. This article analyzes the assumptions behind this Web 2.0 newspeak and unravels how business gurus try to argue the universal benefits of a democratized and collectivist digital space. They implicitly endorse a notion of public collectivism that functions entirely inside commodity culture. The logic of Wikinomics and 'We-Think' urgently begs for deconstruction, especially since it is increasingly steering mainstream cultural theory on digital culture.
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Metadata and data have become a regular currency for citizens to pay for their communication services and security—a trade-off that has nestled into the comfort zone of most people. This article ...deconstructs the ideological grounds of datafication. Datafication is rooted in problematic ontological and epistemological claims. As part of a larger social media logic, it shows characteristics of a widespread secular belief. Dataism, as this conviction is called, is so successful because masses of people — naively or unwittingly — trust their personal information to corporate platforms. The notion of trust becomes more problematic because people’s faith is extended to other public institutions (e.g. academic research and law enforcement) that handle their (meta)data. The interlocking of government, business, and academia in the adaptation of this ideology makes us want to look more critically at the entire ecosystem of connective media.
This article investigates the claims and complexities involved in the platform-based economics of health and fitness apps. We examine a double-edged logic inscribed in these platforms, promising to ...offer personal solutions to medical problems while also contributing to the public good. On the one hand, online platforms serve as personalized data-driven services to their customers. On the other hand, they allegedly serve public interests, such as medical research or health education. In doing so, many apps employ a diffuse discourse, hinging on terms like “sharing,” “open,” and “reuse” when they talk about data extraction and distribution. The analytical approach we adopt in this article is situated at the nexus of science and technology studies, political economy, and the sociology of health and illness. The analysis concentrates on two aspects: datafication (the use and reuse of data) and commodification (a platform’s deployment of governance and business models). We apply these analytical categories to three specific platforms: 23andMe, PatientsLikeMe, and Parkinson mPower. The last section will connect these individual examples to the wider implications of health apps’ data flows, governance policies, and business models. Regulatory bodies commonly focus on the (medical) safety and security of apps, but pay scarce attention to health apps’ techno-economic governance. Who owns user-generated health data and who gets to benefit? We argue that it is important to reflect on the societal implications of health data markets. Governments have the duty to provide conceptual clarity in the grand narrative of transforming health care and health research.
Social media are popular stages for self-expression, communication and self-promotion. Rather than facilitating online identity formation, they are sites of struggle between users, employers and ...platform owners to control online identities – a struggle played out at the level of the interface. This article offers a comparative interface analysis between Facebook and LinkedIn. While Facebook is particularly focused on facilitating personal self-presentation, LinkedIn’s interface caters towards the need for professional self-promotion. And yet, both platforms deploy similar principles of connectivity and narrative – strategies that can be succinctly revealed in recent interface changes. These changing digital architectures form the necessary backdrop for asking critical questions about online self-presentation: How are public identities shaped through platform interfaces? How do these features enable and constrain the sculpting of personal and professional persona? And what are the consequences of imposed connectivity and narrative uniformity on people’s online identities?
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In recent decades, the importance of sound for remembering the past and for creating a sense of belonging has been increasingly acknowledged. We keep "sound souvenirs" such as cassette tapes and long ...play albums in our attics because we want to be able to recreate the music and everyday sounds we once cherished. Artists and ordinary listeners deploy the newest digital audio technologies to recycle past sounds into present tunes. Sound and memory are inextricably intertwined, not just through the commercially exploited nostalgia on oldies radio stations, but through the exchange of valued songs by means of pristine recordings and cultural practices such as collecting, archiving and listing. This book explores several types of cultural practices involving the remembrance and restoration of past sounds. At the same time, it theorizes the cultural meaning of collecting, recycling, reciting, and remembering sound and music.
Herinneringen halen we niet alleen op aan de hand van beelden, maar ook met behulp van geluid. We koesteren onze versleten bandrecorderspoelen, cassettebandjes en langspeelplaten - onze "sound souvenirs" - om de muziek van vroeger nog eens te horen. Radioprogramma's als de Top2000 houden oude nummers eindeloos in de lucht. In geluidsarchieven bewaren we de redes van beroemde politici. In de auto nemen we voortdurend onze persoonlijke muziekbestanden met ons mee. En een enkele keer worden we herinnerd aan geluiden die we liever vergeten, zoals die van bombardementen. Dit boek verkent de verschillende culturele praktijken waarin we het geluid van het verleden gewenst en ongewenst terughalen en probeert de culturele betekenis van het verzamelen, citeren en herinneren van geluid en muziek te begrijpen. Met bijdragen van Ruth Benschop, Carolyn Birdsall, Hans-Joachim Braun, Michael Bull, Karin Bijsterveld & Annelies Jacobs, José van Dijck, Andreas Fickers, Bas Jansen, Trevor Pinch & David Reinecke, Jonathan Sterne, Tim Taylor en Heike Weber.
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