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Platforms and Cultural Production. By Thomas Poell, David B. Nieborg, & Brooke Erin Duffy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2022. 260 pp. ISBN: 9781509540501.
Stemming from a panel at the 2017 Association of Internet Researchers Conference in Tartu, Estonia, Platforms and Cultural Production synthesizes key research from experts in the field of platform studies to offer a comprehensive outlook on platform-dependent cultural creation. In doing so, Thomas Poell, David B. Nieborg, and Brooke Erin Duffy draw from software studies, critical political economy, business studies, and other perspectives to offer readers an interdisciplinary and holistic study of key issues arising from the platformization of contemporary media landscapes in North America, Western Europe, and South Asia.
The book is divided into two parts. The first addresses institutional changes relative to markets, infrastructure, and governance. The second examines shifting cultural practices by focusing on labour, creativity, and democracy. In Chapter one, platforms are defined as "data infrastructures that facilitate, aggregate, monetize and govern interactions between end users and content and service providers" (Poell et al., 2019, as cited in Poell et al., 2022, p. 5). The discussion in this chapter introduces the concept of platformization as a process through which platforms and the cultural industries become increasingly interpenetrated and interdependent that, in turn, affects all activity in and on these platforms including labour, creativity, and democracy.
In Chapter two, markets are examined through the lens of platformization. The authors contend that, whereas platform evolution creates a constant slew of struggles relating to moving-target expectations for creators, platform markets are constantly reshaping and reinventing, taking both economies of scale and economies of scope to unprecedented levels. Poell et al. consider platforms "multisided markets"...