Platformisation

Abstract

This article contextualises, defines, and operationalises the concept of platformisation. Drawing insights from different scholarly perspectives on platforms-software studies, critical political economy, business studies, and cultural studies-it develops a comprehensive approach to this process. Platformisation is defined as the penetration of infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of digital platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life, as well as the reorganisation of cultural practices and imaginations around these platforms. Using app stores as an example, we show how this definition can be employed in research.

COVID-19 Community Archives and the Platformization of Digital Cultural Memory

“…Some initiatives are entirely organized and accessed via platforms like Instagram. Community archives are defined as nontraditional collections and archival communities made up of people who are not well-documented, or not documented at all, by traditional cultural heritage institutions like archives, libraries, or museums [10]. The critical archival theorist Michelle Caswell has argued for the more precise description of "marginalised identity-based community archives" in order to distinguish from other kinds of community archives which may come from dominant or oppressive power structures that ultimately maintain their dominance through preservation [11, p. 23].…”

“…We call this the platformization of digital cultural memory. Here we draw on scholars who theorize the impact of platforms at the juncture of digital, economic, and governmental infrastructures [10], as a process involving human and non-human actors [11], and as a means for critiquing the programmability of data from platforms [12]. We employ the approach of Langlois et.…”

Introduction: touch, click and motion: archaeologies of fashion film after digital culture

“…More recently, this type of speculative design that pushes the boundaries of media and fashion to embodied data capture has become mainstream in the form of wearables such as earbuds and smartwatches. This platformization (Poell et al, 2019), of both fashion and the moving body, returns us to the question of (social media) platforms that work outside the screen as infrastructures of movement. This speculative example, however niche, thus shows how, in the new visual culture of fashion communications, visuality expands far beyond the scopic.…”

Three Challenges for Media Studies in the Age of Platforms

“…While a relatively new field, media studies is well positioned between more traditional scholarly disciplines to provide new insights in the mechanisms and implications of platformization, which involves simultaneous technological, economic, and sociopolitical changes. More specifically, platformization can be understood as the penetration of economic, infrastructural, and governmental extensions of digital platforms in the cultural industries, as well as the reorganization of cultural production and distribution practices around these platforms (Poell et al 2019). This process leads to major conundrums for researchers and policymakers alike.…”