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CP426


The material political economy of digital platforms 
Convenors:
Donald MacKenzie (Edinburgh University)
Addie McGowan (University of Edinburgh)
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Chair:
Judy Wajcman (LSE)
Format:
Closed Panel
Location:
HG-14A00
Sessions:
Tuesday 16 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam

Short Abstract:

Which digital technologies, standards and protocols prevail and which are sidelined is in a broad sense political, and hugely consequential for socioeconomic transformations. It is a crucial topic for STS. Four closely-related papers will examine how these processes play out in digital platforms.

Long Abstract:

The digital economy is material, and is a material *political* economy. Digital systems and practices can be enacted in different ways, and which technologies, standards and protocols prevail and which are sidelined is, in a broad sense, political, interweaving intimately with wider socioeconomic/sociomaterial transformations. Our four papers empirically address this “material politics” (Law and Mol 2008):

Kevin Mellet focuses on “marketing technologies” used to construct durable links between companies and customers. A customer’s electronic identity is material – "this job is plumbing," says one practitioner – and also sometimes sharply contested. Ways of materially organizing marketing technologies' “plumbing” differ considerably, sometimes highly consequentially so.

Donald MacKenzie examines the “app economy’s” central material feedback loop, which fine-tunes advertising to acquiring app users with high “lifetime value.” Apple, Facebook, Google, and smaller platforms collaborated/competed to construct this loop, which was, however, seriously disrupted by material changes made – in the name of “privacy” – by Apple in 2021.

David Nieborg and Thomas Poell examine how dominant platform companies exercise power and control over the relatively open digital advertising ecosystem, focusing directly on these changes by Apple: its 2021 App Tracking Transparency feature—a privacy setting integrated in the operating system of iOS mobile devices. They demonstrate (1) how control is nested and sits at different layers of the infrastructural “ad stack,” and (2) how different types of data shape the distribution of power in this ecosystem.

Addie McGowan expands the canvas to platforms’ interweaving with the broader sociomaterial world, in her case Airbnb and “destination cities.” To make users productive agents of Airbnb’s business goals, governance mechanisms are designed into its user interface and platform affordances. McGowan’s conversations with hosts (users) and Airbnb engineers (producers) explore the material politics of how this governance is experienced and enacted, shaping destinations digitally and materially.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Tuesday 16 July, 2024, -