University Lüneburg, Global Classroom Project of Leuphana (2021). 'platformization'
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZmV6fhSNClQ
Synopsis: the paper advances a theory drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, which spans: software studies, business studies, critical political economy, cultural studies. Central to this is the transformation of the concept of a platform as a 'thing' to the concept of 'platformisation' as a process (Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & Dijck, J. van., 2019). Point: "The usage of the platform concept, both in academia and in business, has seen a number of key shifts since the start of the new millennium. Predating the arrival of contemporary tech behemoths, such as Google and Facebook, the fields of (network) economics and business studies already popularised and theorised the term platform, most prominently in Japan, France, and the United States (Steinberg, 2019). In the early 2000s, US companies such as Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco provided management scholars with rich examples of how to attain 'platform leadership' (Gawer & Cusumano, 2002). One of the most influential contributions to this scholarship conceptualised platforms (e.g., game consoles) as 'two-sided markets' (Rochet & Tirole, 2003). Platform operators aggregate, on the one side buyers or end-users (e.g., players) and on the other side sellers or complementors, such as game publishers. Later contributions incorporated work from neighbouring fields including industrial organisation economics, strategic management, and information technology. This body of work has had significant impact on business discourse and strategies deployed by platform companies, much more so than critical media perspectives" (Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & Dijck, J. van., 2019). Point: "we therefore understand platformisation as the penetration of the infrastructures, economic processes, and governmental frameworks of platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life. And in the tradition of cultural studies, we conceive of this process as the reorganisation of cultural practices and imaginations around platforms" (Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & Dijck, J. van., 2019). Point: "One body of work that is at the forefront of theorising the shifting relationships among users and platforms concerns work on labour. By introducing concepts such as 'aspirational labor', 'relational labor', and 'hope labor', cultural studies researchers have critically examined how specific practices and understandings of labour emerged within platform markets (Baym, 2015; Duffy, 2016; Kuehn & Corrigan, 2013). As Duffy (2016, p. 453) points out, newly emerging occupations, such as streamers, vloggers and bloggers, tend to reify 'gendered social hierarchies', that 'leave women's work unrecognized and/or under-compensated'. Considering platformisation from this perspective means analysing how social practices and imaginations are organised around platforms. This, in turn, shapes how platforms evolve as particular data infrastructures, markets, and governance frameworks" (Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & Dijck, J. van., 2019). "The ecosystem of online platforms is very heterogeneous, ranging from large international companies to small national or local start-ups. Many institutions and think-tanks have made an attempt to provide an overview of the existing platform ecosystem. It is difficult to collect comprehensive and comparable data on online platform companies. Due to the absence of a common legally binding definition of online platform as well as national registries for active platforms, current estimates of the size of the platform economy are limited to survey data and only partially reflect information available on revenues of the parties involved: including platforms, people working via platforms and third parties (Pesole et al., 2018; Brancati, Pesole and Férnandéz-Macías, 2020; Barcevičius et al., 2021). In many cases, the information that can be gathered is mostly from trade union work and thanks to close cooperation with existing work councils and European institutions" (Sabanova, I., 2018). Further: Data and Organisations: A Collaborative Open Course For Master Programs https://dataandorganisations.org/ Bibliography: Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & Dijck, J. van. (2019). 'Platformisation'. Internet Policy Review, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1425 https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Poell,+Nieborg,+%26+van+Dijck+(2019)&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart https://policyreview.info/pdf/policyreview-2019-4-1425.pdf Sabanova, I. (2018). 'Policy Report: Online Platforms and Platform Work'. Futureofwork.fes.de. https://futureofwork.fes.de/our-projects/mapping-platform-economy/report https://collections.fes.de/publikationen/download/pdf/460887
