The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity

Abstract

This article explores how the political economy of the cultural industries changes through platformization: the penetration of economic and infrastructural extensions of online platforms into the web, affecting the production, distribution, and circulation of cultural content. It pursues this investigation in critical dialogue with current research in business studies, political economy, and software studies. Focusing on the production of news and games, the analysis shows that in economic terms platformization entails the replacement of two-sided market structures with complex multisided platform configurations, dominated by big platform corporations. Cultural content producers have to continuously grapple with seemingly serendipitous changes in platform governance, ranging from content curation to pricing strategies. Simultaneously, these producers are enticed by new platform services and infrastructural changes. In the process, cultural commodities become fundamentally "contingent," that is increasingly modular in design and continuously reworked and repackaged, informed by datafied user feedback.

“First Week Is Editorial, Second Week Is Algorithmic”: Platform Gatekeepers and the Platformization of Music Curation

“…Positioning within a playlist varies over time, according to the mixed action of algorithmic logics based on users' feedbacks and editorial logics based on curators' skills. In this sense, the position of a song is "contingent," as intended by Nieborg and Poell (2018): "increasingly modular in design and continuously reworked and repackaged, informed by datafied user feedback" (p. 1). These two logics act in real time on the generation and the curation of the playlist: the playlists, a week after the release, no longer have the same shape.…”

Platformization of the Unlikely Creative Class: Kuaishou and Chinese Digital Cultural Production

“…This state-commerce relationship renders Kuaishou's content production acutely contingent and, we argue, distinguishes the platformization of cultural production in contemporary China from that in the West and constitutes a third dimension to what Nieborg and Poell (2018, p. 2) summarize as the "contingency" of platform cultural production. According to Nieborg and Poell (2018), this contingency is consisted of "platform dependency" and "contingent commodities." The former refers to the dominant power of only a few platforms, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) in the West and Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT) in China, which "allow[s] content developers to systematically track and profile the activities and preferences of billions of users."…”

Towards a Theory of Digital Network De/centralization: Platform-Infrastructure Lessons Drawn from Blockchain

“…The introduction of intermediating platforms became necessary with the emergence of Web 2.0 where the sharing, exchange and transaction of user-generated content among dispersed peers of a network had to be organized, rationalized, aggregated and coordinated . This centralized intermediation introduces new issues as it necessarily requires some form of surveillance, inspection, filtering and censorship (more generally, control) of the data and content transmitted over the infrastructure (Deibert el al., 2010;Fuchs, 2011Fuchs, & 2013Gillespie, 2010 andNieborg and Poell, 2018;Srnicek, 2017;van Dijck, 2013;van Dijck et al, 2018;Zittrain and Palfrey, 2008;Zuboff, 2019). Both the economic literature on two-sided platforms Tirole, 2003,2006;Evans and Schmalensee, 2005) and the managerial literature on business ecosystems (Adner, 2017;Baldwin, 2012;Gawer, 2009a;Gawer and Henderson, 2007;Gulati et al, 2012;Jacobides et al 2018;Kapoor and Agarwal 2017;Thomas et al, 2014) mainly belong to this second interpretation of platform, conceived as a focal hub or intermediary that exercises some central organizing or coordinating function over the wider networked system.…”