Digital Platforms, Imperialism and Political Culture

Dal Yong Jin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317509042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Étude des média

In the networked twenty-first century, digital platforms have significantly influenced capital accumulation and digital culture. Platforms, such as social network sites (e.g. Facebook), search engines (e.g. Google), and smartphones (e.g. iPhone), are increasingly crucial because they function as major digital media intermediaries. Emerging companies in non-Western countries have created unique platforms, controlling their own national markets and competing with Western-based platform empires in the global markets. The reality though is that only a handful of Western countries, primarily the U.S., have dominated the global platform markets, resulting in capital accumulation in the hands of a few mega platform owners. This book contributes to the platform imperialism discourse by mapping out several core areas of platform imperialism, such as intellectual property, the global digital divide, and free labor, focusing on the role of the nation-state alongside transnational capital.

Part I Imperialism Is Back

1 Platform Technologies and Political Culture

DOI: 10.4324/9781315717128-1

Introduction: Power Shift from the World Wide Web to Platforms

“You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad—that's one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times—three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix's streaming service. You've spent the day on the Internet—but not on the Web. And you are not alone. Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display.”

(Anderson, 2010)

In August 2010,Wired magazine announced the ‘Death of the Web,’ based on the premise that platforms are becoming the primary mode of access to the Internet. It was only a few years ago when the same Wired chanted the powerful role of the World Wide Web in our networked society (Long, 2008). In July 2008, it clearly stated:

“the Web became publicly available on the Internet for the first time in 1991. The web has changed a lot since Tim Berners-Lee posted the first web pages summarizing his World Wide Web project, a method of storing knowledge using hypertext documents.¹ Today's web is far more powerful and sophisticated than the research tool developed by Berners-Lee and Cailliau but continues operating on basically the same principles they established a quarter of a century ago.”

This rather shocking contrast between the end of the Web and the emergence of platforms within only a handful of years undoubtedly exemplifies the swift change in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). Since the first use of the World Wide Web (hereafter Web) in 1991, the Web has indeed been the primary engine for the growth of the Internet. The dominant position of the Web in the networked society has not been challenged until now as platforms are suddenly replacing it. Of course, this does not mean that we are actually witnessing and/or expecting the death of the Web, given its continuous role in our network society. We also cannot separate platforms from the Internet age in which the Web plays a primary role because people certainly use both the Web and applications in order to maximize the benefits from these digital technologies.²

What we are able to admit is that the era of platforms is not the same as the Web-based Internet because applications (apps), which are software, play a key role as one of the primary digital intermediaries. For example, Facebook won the Web, partially because of its innovative features that set it apart from other social network sites. First and foremost, the 2007 launch of the Facebook Platform was key to Facebook's success. This open application programming interface made it possible for third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook itself. Almost immediately after being released, the platform gained a massive amount of attention, and now there are hundreds of thousands of apps built on the platform—so many that Facebook has recently launched the Facebook App Store to organize and display them all (Goble, 2012). As the smartphone is rapidly replacing traditional mobile phones, many users also select their own smartphones because they primarily want to use multiple applications. As a few smartphone makers, such as Apple and Samsung, have rapidly advanced their new gadgets, applications also become some of the most significant factors for the users in selecting their own smartphones.

Platform is a useful term because it is a broad enough category to capture several distinct phenomena, such as social networking, shift from desktop to tablet computing, and smart phone and app-based interfaces, as well as the increasing dominance of centralized cloud-based computing (Hands, 2013a). The platform is also specific enough to “indicate the capturing of digital life in an enclosed, commercialized and managed realm. While the presence of the Internet must not be forgotten, theories of network culture need to be supplemented with new frameworks and paradigms” (Hands, 2013a, 1).³ Although it was not long ago when people began to witness the emergence of platforms, platform technologies and politics are suddenly ubiquitous in everyday life. They are deeply woven into contemporary life, politically, economically, culturally, and technologically.

Platforms in the Digital Economy and Culture

Platforms, such as social network sites (SNSs) (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), search engines (e.g., Google), and smartphones (e.g., iPhone and Galaxy)⁴ and their operating systems (e.g., Android and iOS), are known as digital intermediaries. They have greatly changed and influenced people's daily lives. Social network sites and smartphones have become necessary tools for high school students to connect with friends. The popularity of social networks for democracy as in the case of Arab Spring (2010) continues to grow exponentially. As James Curran (2012, 3) argues, the Internet which can be accessed through the Web would rejuvenate democracy by enabling direct e-government through popular referenda, and it would democratize our society. In the early 21st century, platform technologies, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as smartphones have further enabled the fundamental shift from the mass-mediated public sphere to platform-driven public sphere (Benkler, 2006) because platforms provide opportunities for people to mobilize themselves effectively for social change. Global youth also rapidly access Facebook and Twitter on spots as their new communication method. With the rise of new platforms, communication and cooperation have become more important features of the digital society (Fuchs, 2008). The phenomenal growth and use of smartphones and relevant apps have had a huge impact on our society in a shorter period of time than have any other technologies.

In the era of globalization, platforms have also gained significance for the digital economy, because people heavily access and use these platforms. As Facebook and Google are for-profit, U.S.-based platforms, user activities, not only as customers but also as producers of content for these platforms, become a new revenue source for platform owners. Platform owners who are mega media and technology giants have developed their strategies to appropriate user activities in order to transform users’ daily performances into monetary revenue resources. While it is not new to witness the commodification of customers in previous media, including television and the Internet, the massive commercialization of platform users has further raised concerns because only a handful of platforms dominate the global markets. Therefore, the digital platform has emerged “as an increasingly familiar term in the description of the online services of content intermediaries, both in their self-characterizations and in the broader public discourse of users, the press and commentaries” (Gillespie, 2010, 349).

Due to the significance of platforms in both the digital economy and culture, several countries have developed their own SNSs and smartphones—not only as hardware architecture but also as software frameworks that allow software to run—for the digital economy and culture, including intellectual property and participatory culture. Unlike the era of the Web, platforms are themselves centered on intellectual property rights as one of the most significant tools to accumulate capital in the hands of a few platform owners and the countries, as in the case of the tug-of-war between Apple and Samsung.

Many corporations in several countries, from start-ups to mega information technology firms, have invented their own platforms. Several social network sites preceded Facebook. Asian Avenue—targeting an Asian-American community—launched in July 1997, and Cyworld in Korea originally started in 1999. Skyrock (formerly Skyblog), which was a French blogging service before adding SNS features, was born in 2002. These few players have advanced their unique platforms, controlled their own national markets and/or communities, and competed with U.S.-based platforms in the global markets. Later, several non-Western countries also developed their own smartphones, including Samsung Galaxy III in Korea, HTC in Taiwan, and Huawei in China.

At a glance, therefore, the massive switch to the digital economy has provided a surplus of capital for several emerging powers, including China, India, and Korea, with which to challenge the longer-term U.S. dominance (Boyd-Barrett, 2006, 24). These countries have presumably competed with Western countries, in particular the U.S., and they are supposed to build a new global order with their advanced digital technologies. Some theoreticians indeed focus on the emergence of a few non-Western countries as major players in the platform market.

The reality is that only a handful of Western countries, primarily the U.S., have developed social network sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, encompassing several new features and functions (boyd and Ellison, 2008) and smartphones, and have dominated the global platform market. Although the U.S. is not the sole player in the platform business, the extensive role of the U.S. is not deniable in the early 21st century. There are doubts as to whether non-Western ICT corporations have reorganized the global flow and constructed a balance between the West and the East. The panacea of technology may reduce imperialism and domination to vestiges of the past; however, technology will always be the reality of human hierarchy and domination (Maurais, 2003; Demont-Heinrich, 2008), and digital technologies have buttressed U.S. hegemony.

In fact, non-Western countries have not, and likely cannot, construct a balanced global order because Google (including its Android operating system), Facebook, Twitter, and Apple's iPhones (and iOS), as well as YouTube, are indices of the dominance of the U.S. in the digital economy and political culture. Again, several developing countries, such as China and Korea, have invented and advanced their platforms, but their use is mainly limited to their own territory or their own diaspora with a few exceptions. Therefore, it is not controversial to say that American dominance has been continued with platforms. Platforms have functioned as a new form of distributor and producer that the U.S. dominates. Arguably, we are still living in the imperialist era.

The hegemonic power of American-based platforms is especially crucial because Google, Facebook, iPhone, and Android have functioned as major digital media intermediaries thanks to their advanced roles in aggregating several services. Of course, platforms are not only gathering information from users, but also commercializing user information as commodity, resulting in massive capital accumulation for the owners of these platforms as well as their countries. Although user activities are mainly voluntary when it comes to platforms, activities are commodified by platform owners. The U.S., which had traditionally controlled non-Western countries with its military power, capital, and, later, cultural products, now seems to dominate the world with platforms, benefitting from these platforms in terms of both capital accumulation and spreading symbolic ideologies and cultures.

This new trend raises the question of whether the U.S., which has always utilized its imperial power, not only with military force, capital, and cultural products, but also with technologies, continues to control the majority of the world in order to actualize the same dominance, this time, with platform technologies. Since several countries have also developed their own platforms and competed with U.S.-based platforms, it is critical to determine whether these countries are able to overcome Western influences and become major players both nationally and globally. Since platforms have become crucial as the primary component of the digital economy and culture, it is significant to understand the close relations between platform owners, mostly located in the U.S., and platform users in the majority of countries globally. The goal is ultimately to comprehend whether platform technologies and relative ideologies have intensified asymmetrical power relations between ...