Introductory description

In this module you will learn about the opportunities and challenges opened up by the growing role of the platforms in contemporary society. You will be introduced to key concepts for understanding the distinctive economic, cultural and media features that make the platform model the distinguishing organizational form of the first part of the 21st Century. Some have argued that platforms can be understood as combinations of markets, hierarchies, or networks. Those ideas have promise. But it is more insightful to understand the platform model as its own social form.

Your learning will be supported through exploration of real-world examples of the operation of platform. The module will be intensive: you will be able to take advantage of immersion into the conceptual and practical challenges of the platform economy. The module is structured by topic -- with readings, lectures, and seminars on a given theme each morning followed group work in the afternoon in which your team be given an assignment to investigate a real world aspect of that topic.

Special focus will be on algorithmic management as an attempt to deal with the challenge of how to control assets and activities that are on the platform but not part of the firm. As an assemblage of people, devices, and software, algorithmic management is best studied with interdisciplinary methods. Other highlighted topics include ratings and rankings, playlists, user evaluations, and the politics of regulation using a range of methods. The combination of lectures, seminars, and assignment-based work will equip you to recognise, analyse, and understand how platforms are reshaping work, culture, and politics.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

More and more of our daily activities are carried out on platforms. How did they become so ubiquitous and so powerful? Platforms are not just economic entities, they are also cultural forms. How do these economic, social and cultural forms intertwine? How are the multi-sided interactions on platforms coordinated? What are the new regimes of visibility that are taking place on platforms? Students will be exposed to real-world problems and challenged to devise innovative research strategies to study them. The module comprises lectures and seminars on platform as organizational form; algorithmic management; algorithmic curation of playlists; platform policy regulation; and coalition politics. These are complemented by group projects on data collection and analysis, as well as group projects on research design and critical reflections on methodology.

Introductory online session

Session 1 Platforms and Algorithmic Management

Session 2 Who’s Paying Attention to Whom? Platforms as a new regime of visibility

Session 3 Competitions, Ratings and Rankings

Session 4 Algorithmic curation of a new cultural product – Playlists

Session 5 Platform Political Model(s) : Who’s in Alliance with Whom?

Session 6 Summing up: group presentations.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• -- Demonstrate a detailed understanding of the platform model and its political, economic, and cultural aspects as an important part of society today.
• -- Demonstrate an appreciation of how diverging methods can illuminate complex problems in real world settings that cut across economic, culture, and technology;.
• -- Gain experience working in an interdisciplinary team with others who have different skill sets.
• -- Demonstrate the use of various methods to understand the social coalitions affecting platform regulatory policies.

Indicative reading list

Platform as Distinctive Form

Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’. New Media & Society, 12(3), 347-364. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342738

Plantin, J-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P.N., & Sandvig, C. (2018) Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293310. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1461444816661553

Castelle, M. (2016). Marketplace platforms or exchanges? Financial metaphors for regulating the collaborative economy. Economic Sociology_The European Electronic Newsletter, 17(3), 1426

Algorithmic Management

Curchod, C., Patriotta, G., Cohen, L., & Neysen, N. (2020). Working for an algorithm: Power asymmetries and agency in online work settings. Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(3), 644676. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0001839219867024

Kornberger, M., Pflueger, D., & Mouritsen, J. (2017). Evaluative Infrastructures: Accounting for platform organization. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 60, 7995. DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2017.05.002

Vallas, S.P. & Schor, J.B. (2020). What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Gig Economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 273294. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054857

Playlists as Ranked Lists

Prey, R. (2020a). Locating Power in Platformization: Music Streaming Playlists and Curatorial Power. Social Media + Society, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120933291

Bonini, T., & Gandini, A. (2019). “First Week Is Editorial, Second Week Is Algorithmic”: Platform Gatekeepers and the Platformization of Music Curation. Social Media + Society, 5(4), 111. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119880006

Prey, R. (2020b). Performing Numbers: Musicians and their Metrics. In D. Stark (Ed.) The Performance Complex. Competition and Competitions in Social Life (pp. 241259). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Occupational structure

Enriquez, D. & Vertesi, J. (2020), Managing Algorithms: The partial automation of middle management and its implications for gig worker. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Princeton University.

Vertesi, J., Goldstein, A., Enriquez, D., Liur, L. & Miller, K. T. (2020).“Pre-Automation: Insourcing and Automating the Gig Economy.” Sociologica, 14(3).

Political Business Models, Alliances and Regulation

Rahman, K.S., & Thelen, K. (2019). The Rise of the Platform Business Model and the Transformation of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism. Politics & Society, 47(2), 177204. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0032329219838932

Plantin, J. C., & de Seta, G. (2019). WeChat as infrastructure: The techno-nationalist shaping of Chinese digital platforms.Chinese Journal of Communication, 12(3), 257273. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2019.1572633

Thelen, K. (2018). Regulating Uber: The Politics of the Platform Economy in Europe and the United States. Perspectives on Politics, 16(4), 938953

Research element

During the practice-based sessions students will work in teams to do research on aspects of platforms, involving issues, for example, such as platform practices as opaque control via “terms and conditions”, explicit rankings and disguised rankings (for example on streaming platform playlists), new patterns of visibility and invisibility, deflected accountability, changing class structure, and regulatory policies in comparative perspective (US, Europe, China).

Interdisciplinary

Platforms involve economic, social, cultural and computational aspects. The course will draw from concepts, readings, and methods from these different fields.

International

Much of the work on platforms is US- centric -- highly problematic since many of the largest and most powerful platforms are based in China. The module will take a comparative approach to the study of platforms, addressing the wide variation in regulatory and social environment in the United States, Europe, and China.

Subject specific skills

-- Knowledge of an important development that is having a large impact in many fields.
-- Research skills to study a complex phenomenon that combines economic, social, organizational, cultural and computational components.

Transferable skills

-- Research design
--Data collection skills
-- Data analysis skills
-- Team working skills
-- Presentational skills