Digital platforms are not just software-based media, they are governing systems that control, interact, and accumulate. They also solidify markets; that is, social networks of exchange that do not necessarily leave data traces, into infrastructure, that is, material arrangements of traceable activity. This article examines the forms of domination found in this digital platform model, and corrects some existing simplistic theoretical conclusions about digital platforms. It first provides a schematic overview of digital infrastructures of governance, and the attendant systemic mechanics they engender. It then argues that we need a more syncretic, interdisciplinary approach to the platform-based economy. The shifting emphases of different academic disciplines in relation to digital platforms are only partially grounded in their different normative biases; they can also be attributed to use of different disciplinary lenses. The field of information systems management and design studies is chiefly concerned with direct, technical interplatform affordances and connections, and with providing observations of certain systemic attributes of digital platforms. Critical political economy, by contrast, mainly considers the emerging transnational, geopolitical formations of platform capitalism. The interplay between these different systemic mechanics is summarized and presented here in the concept of "platform logic."

The article proposes that social media platforms enable large volumes of user-driven circulation of media content, and argues for a combination of qualitative and quantitative considerations when analysing data from such platforms. Issues of context are vital; context must be understood both qualitatively (cultural setting) and quantitatively (statistical reference points for comparison). The authors emphasise that the possibilities of ‘big data’ should not tilt analyses so that sensitivities to subtler meanings are lost. By examining a recent research project of our own, examples are given of how topological network analysis can be successfully combined with close readings of strategically selected parts of the data and how, by doing so, context shifts can be identified that increase the reliability of the analysis. Consequently, it is recommended that mere number crunching is not enough, and that questions of ‘how,’ ‘why,’ and ‘whether’ are required in order to understand the phenomena in their societal settings. 

En handfull nätjättar, som Facebook och Google, har fått mycket stor makt. Denna plattformisering påverkar hela samhället och ekonomin, och är en förändring jämförbar med fordismen eller taylorismen, skriver medieforskaren Jonas Andersson Schwarz.

Plattformssamhället, del 1

Ett fåtal stora aktörer har blivit alltmer dominerande på internet och i människors vardag. SvD Kultur belyser hur utvecklingen påverkar samhället, ekonomin, kulturen och människan.

Digital piracy cultures and peer-to-peer technologies combined to spark transformations in audio-visual distribution between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s. Digital piracy also inspired the creation of a global anti-piracy law and policy regime, and counter-movements such as the Swedish and German Pirate Parties. These trends provide starting points for a wide-ranging debate about the prospects for deep and lasting changes in social life enabled by piratical technology practices. This edited volume brings together contemporary scholarship in communication and media studies, addressing piracy as a recombinant feature of popular communication, technological innovation, and communication law and policy. An international collection of contributors highlights key debates about piracy, popular communication, and social change, and provides a lasting resource for global media studies.

Through an interview-based study of Swedish public service broadcasting (PSB) companies, I explore the ways in which these institutions react to and interact with a set of normative conceptions of a contemporary digital media ecology characterized by social networking and personalization of the media experience. The respondents were engaged in negotiations of how to realistically maintain public values in a commercially configured online milieu. The nature of organizational adaptation within PSB is found to be complex. Several elements of the Nordic PSB model appear to counteract acquiescence to algorithmically aided personalization: its majoritarian heritage, its institutional caution toward data positivism, favoring more interpretive editorial audience knowledge, and the high costs and structural consequences of making individual users uniquely identifiable. These organizational ambitions and obstacles are embodied in recent innovations that act to mimic a personalized delivery, however, doing so without utilizing algorithmically aided prediction and instead favoring manual editorial selection.

The purpose of this chapter is to make some general conclusions from recently conducted fieldwork on one of the world’s most comprehen- sive, but also selective, communities for film swapping; I have chosen to omit the name of this community out of concern for its members. Specialist torrent sites like these are unregulated in that they are not sanctioned by the copyright industry – yet, internally, they remain highly regulated. The chapter provides an overview and a discussion of these sites, and the way these are integrated in a wider economy of film circulation, user agency, knowledge and affects. In theorizing my findings, I mainly draw on theories of culture and sociality outlined by Pierre Bourdieu.