Platforms, Power, and Friction
eBook - ePub

Platforms, Power, and Friction

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Platforms, Power, and Friction

About this book

This edited book deconstructs the myth of frictionless digital platform expansion, revealing the persistent "platform frictions" that shape platform economies and politics. Through a series of case studies, it explores how, despite universal aspirations, big tech's drive for global expansion and appeal is realized only through encounters with diverse local contexts. It is in these frictional encounters that the exact contours of platform power and dominance are negotiated.

The collection examines how frictions arising in key domains like policy, platform design, gig labor, and platform market relations can both contest and reinforce platform power. From user pushback to platform policy changes to the challenges facing platform cooperatives, the case studies explore the nuanced realities of actually existing platformization, illustrating how local adaptations and resistances shape expanding digital platforms services, economies, cultures, and ideologies.

This volume contributes an urgent and critical perspective to platform studies, foregrounding local power dynamics, values, and cultures that give the platform economy its actually existing forms. It is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the complexities and contingencies in the age of global platform dominance. It was originally published as a special issue of Information, Communication & Society.

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Yes, you can access Platforms, Power, and Friction by Pawel Popiel,Krishnan Vasudevan in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2025
eBook ISBN
9781040419700
Topic
Social Sciences
Index
Social Sciences

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Contents
  6. Citation Information
  7. Notes on Contributors
  8. Introduction: platform frictions, platform power, and the politics of platformization
  9. 1 Patrons of commerce: asymmetrical reciprocity and moral economies of platform power
  10. 2 Competing digital capacities: between state-led digital governance and local data center tradeoffs
  11. 3 Frictions and flows in Twitch’s platform economy: viewer spending, platform features and user behaviours
  12. 4 Dreaming of seamless interfaces: media and friction from the feuilleton to personal computing
  13. 5 Ecologies of friction in digital platform investment
  14. 6 Smooth operator: sleuthing Homo oeconomicus on social media platforms through a close reading of design
  15. 7 The specter of global ByteDance: platforms, regulatory arbitrage, and politics
  16. 8 Dis//assemblages of AI: repair labor and resistance in the automated workplace
  17. Index