Global perspectives on platforms and cultural production (original) (raw)
Related papers
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2024
Research on platforms and cultural production is dominated by studies that take the Anglo-American world and Northwestern Europe as their main points of reference. Central concepts in the field, consequently, bear the imprint of Western institutions, cultural practices, and ideals. Critically responding to this state of affairs, this opening essay of the special issue on Global Perspectives on Platforms and Cultural Production, consisting of 20 articles, aims to: 1) challenge universalism, 2) provincialize the US, and 3) multiply our frames of reference. Pursuing these objectives, we bring together ideas from postcolonial and decolonial theory and platform studies in a systematic research program. This global perspectives program allows us to: denaturalize and rethink dominant concepts and ideas through research from around the globe; explicitly thematize and examine the global power relations that structure platform economies; and critically interrogate the knowledge production about these economies.
A global approach to studying platforms and cultural production
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2024
There is a major blindspot regarding our understanding of different structural models of platformization beyond the dominant Anglo-American markets. This article develops a typology of political economic models of platformization by using the case of music platformization. In order to generate such a typology, the article proposes that we start by identifying variables present in any music market around the world. Three different variables are proposed: (1) platform dependence; (2) dominance of 'global' platforms; and (3) the degree of platform and recording industry integration. To illustrate how these variables result in structurally distinct models of platformization, the article briefly discusses the cases of South Korea, the Netherlands and Nigeria. In doing so, a framework is provided through which to interpret the experiences and conditions of musicians, and other cultural producers, in diverse platform ecosystems.
Studying Platforms and Cultural Production: Methods, Institutions, and Practices
Social Media + Society, 2020
This introduction to the second special collection of articles on the platformization of the cultural industries foregrounds research methods and practices. Drawing from the 12 articles included in this collection, as well as the 14 articles published in the first collection, we identify commonalities in approaches, consistencies in traditions, and uniform modes of analysis. We argue that approaches that have been deployed in media industry studies for decades—semi-structured interviews, discourse analysis, content analysis, and participant observation—remain productive. At the same time, transformations in the temporalities and curation of cultural production require updated modes of investigation and analysis. As such, we spotlight contributors’ novel methods and innovative theoretical approaches, such as the walkthrough method and multi-sided market theory.
Platform capitalisms and platform cultures
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2024
This article argues for a pluralization of the "platform capitalism" framework, suggesting we should think instead in terms of "platform capitalisms." This pluralization opens the way to a better account of how platforms work in different geocultural contexts, with our focus being on China, India and Japan. The article first outlines several roles the state has taken on in mediating platform capitalisms. We then signal three main axes around which to consider the implications of platform capitalisms for cultural production: state-platform symbiosis; platform precarity; and the informal-formal relation in cultural production. This short provocation, we hope, will help foreground the crucial role of the state in platform capitalisms, such that the state-culture-capitalism nexus might be better acknowledged in research on platforms and cultural production now and into the future. This is particularly important as states themselves increasingly become platform operators.
Platform Studies and Digital Cultural Industries
Sociologia, 2020
By providing a review of a number of recent and relevant publications, this paper reconstructs major trends, topics and challenges within the state of the art of scholarly research on the platformization of cultural industries, addressing the crucial role that digital platforms have acquired in recent years in the production and circulation of a variety of cultural contents. More specifically, after offering an introduction on the ways in which the study of digital platforms emerged as strictly intertwined with the evolution of certain cultural industry sectors, such as gaming and video sharing, the paper addresses in-depth three distinctive domains of cultural production and consumption: music, journalism, and photography. In so doing, the paper traces a variety of perspectives beyond the mainstream political economy-oriented focus of platform studies, suggesting emerging paths for future research on these rapidly shifting and increasingly debated issues.
The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity
New Media & Society, 2018
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.
Platform Cultures Syllabus PhD-2022
2022
This course examines the streaming platforms and their cultural impacts. Grounding the course in readings from film, media, and communication studies, we will examine the general state of writings around platforms, as well as the blind-spots of platform research. This will include attention to geopolitics (platform imperialism), attention to the new manners in which film and media industries globalize (in both production and circulation), the ways that nations or regions are born out of particular media platform configurations, and the impact of earlier formats such as broadcast television on streaming platforms. This course will introduce students to crucial texts in the expanded field of platform studies (from analyses of Netflix to theories of platform capitalism), while also extending debates from film and media studies to address lacunae in current platform analyses. This course will focus on streaming platform research in particular, across a number of geographical and regional contexts. Drawing on the increasingly rich work on Asian platforms (East Asian and South Asian especially), this could will focus on this region to decenter the presumed dominance of so-called “Western” (i.e. Silicon Valley) platforms. Adopting a case study model, this course will include weekly presentations on platform case studies, as well as attention to major streaming players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and the models of global media they develop.
Platform Cultures MA course - 2022
We respect the continued connections with the past, present and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community. Description: This course examines the streaming platforms and their cultural impacts. Grounding the course in readings from film, media, and communication studies, we will examine the general state of writings around platforms, as well as the blind-spots of platform research. This will include attention to geopolitics (platform imperialism), attention to the new manners in which film and media industries globalize (in both production and circulation), the ways that nations or regions are born out of particular media platform configurations, and the impact of earlier formats such as broadcast television on streaming platforms. This course will introduce students to crucial texts in the expanded field of platform studies (from analyses of Netflix to theories of platform capitalism), while also extending debates from film and media studies to address lacunae in current platform analyses. This course will focus on streaming platform research in particular, across a number of geographical and regional contexts. Drawing on the increasingly rich work on Asian platforms (East Asian and South Asian especially), this course will focus on this region to decenter the presumed dominance of so-called "Western" (i.e. Silicon Valley) platforms. Adopting a case study model, this course will include weekly presentations on platform case studies, as well as
Digital Platform as a Double-Edged Sword: How to Interpret Cultural Flows in the Platform Era
International Journal of Communication, 2017
This article critically examines the main characteristics of cultural flows in the era of digital platforms. By focusing on the increasing role of digital platforms during the Korean Wave (referring to the rapid growth of local popular culture and its global penetration starting in the late 1990s), it first analyzes whether digital platforms as new outlets for popular culture have changed traditional notions of cultural flows—the forms of the export and import of popular culture mainly from Western countries to non-Western countries. Second, it maps out whether platform-driven cultural flows have resolved existing global imbalances in cultural flows. Third, it analyzes whether digital platforms themselves have intensified disparities between Western and non-Western countries. In other words, it interprets whether digital platforms have deepened asymmetrical power relations between a few Western countries (in particular, the United States) and non-Western countries.