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Paper short abstract

This project explores the methodological opportunities and challenges of infrastructure teardown through a case study of how knowledge of 'health' has been platformised through the infrastructure design.

Paper long abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate that STS expands our understanding of platforms, effectively switching the predominant research attention from user-generated content to the devices as infrastructures, which are socio-materials often overlooked (Gillespie et al., 2014). From this perspective, platforms are artifacts that assemble technological, social, cultural, economic, political elements into their design (Winner, 1980). Meanwhile, STS underlines the dynamic relationship between society and technology, showing that political, economic, and cultural power can be manifested and traced through technological infrastructures. This approach encourages us to develop a new methodological framework for actively tracing platform infrastructures designed primarily for datafication, moving beyond the current methodological focus on employing platforms as a field for research data collection.

Using a nutrition app, Yuka, as a case study, I demonstrate a methodological exploration of tracing platform infrastructures, which combines technography (Butcher, 2018) and the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018). This teardown facilitates us to invert platforms as contextual and relational infrastructures (Bowker, 1994), allowing us to unpack how knowledge production through platforms manifests socio-technical starks for datafication. Through the lens of STS, tracing infrastructures expands platforms’ capacity to offer new research terrain for emerging inquires of datafication in everyday life.