The politics of ‘platforms’

Abstract

Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged.

Linking Platforms, Practices, and Developer Ethics: Levers for Privacy Discourse in Mobile Application Development

“…This paper expands on the concept of values levers by considering the mediating role of platforms: corporate actors that, because they control access to markets, have the power to influence the work practices of an entire industry (Gillespie 2010). We contrast two platforms-iOS and Android development-with similar technical challenges, but different regulatory practices and development ethos.…”

“…Devs also rely on distribution by two major international platforms: the Apple App Store and Google's Play Marketplace (VisionMobile 2016). While digital platforms regularly present themselves as neutral intermediaries for user content, the corporate actors that build platforms actively shape the content they host through both technical design decisions and policy mechanisms (Gillespie 2010). In mobile development, such shaping includes attention to privacy, and devs must navigate the privacy rules and regulations of these application platforms.…”

Irreconcilability in the Digital: Gender, Technological Imaginings and Maternal Subjectivity

“…Here, it is the ability to move through space(s) that is deemed important and implicated in these constructions is also the notion of choice as a key facet of agency. As many new media theorists would argue (see for example van Dijck 2009van Dijck , 2011Barbules 2002, Gillespie 2010, Kember & Zylinska 2012 this undermines and negates the technology as a framing, meaningful or powerful actor, constructing it as a malleable if not passive space to be moved through. It is interesting to note that this construction emerges in relation to pregnant maternal subjectivity, but seems less possible (as I discuss later) for a mothering subjectivity.…”

How Evasion Matters: Implications from Surfacing Data Tracking Online

“…But this recording feature is no less important to Internet studies and user activity. Despite our willingness to study platforms, [6] algorithms, [7] and bots, [8] the server and its economically driven priorities remain arguably the most overlooked actors in studies of the web.…”