New book – Platforms: A Critical Introduction (Polity)

Platforms Everywhere: Understanding What Platforms Are and How to Study Them For years, much of public and academic debates about platforms revolved around social media. Today, attention has shifted toward artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructures, and AI platforms. Yet many of the underlying concerns remain the same: concentration of power, data extraction, infrastructure dependency, governance, and… Read more New book – Platforms: A Critical Introduction (Polity)

Mapping business and data partnerships in the social media ecosystem

Research article by Fernando van der Vlist and Anne Helmond – An empirical study about the significance of partnerships and how partners mediate and shape platform power published in the open access journal Big Data & Society. Social media platforms are among the world’s most profitable businesses whose business models rely on digital advertising revenues.… Read more Mapping business and data partnerships in the social media ecosystem