Abstract
There is an increasing number of books focusing on algorithms and social, or more broadly digital, media so what new does this edited collection have to offer? The three editors explain that for them ‘the key question is not that platforms, through their own algorithmic logics, determine the polarisation of social and working behaviour, but rather that specific “modes of feeling”, through platforms, become forms of subjectivity, implicit ways of selecting choices and ultimately of looking at the world’ (p. 3). What they purport to offer is a critical sociology of platform capitalism ‘studying the interactions and productive tensions between digital platforms and their users’ practices, achieves a delicate balance between opposing tendencies, such as between the objective or the subjective, the structural and the contingent moment, the particular and the general’ (p. 12) by strongly emphasising the importance of human agency.
The two main parts of the book offer theoretical foundations and case studies on ‘the intersection between platform capitalism and the subjectivities inhabiting it’ (p. 8) as well as ‘concrete processes in which neoliberal subjectivity is defined within the digital environments of the platforms’ affordances’ (p. 9). The theoretical chapters explore issues such as the Californian ideology, the question of freedom and the relationship among subjectivity, value and labour. The case studies used are quite varied – from crypto-finance to a food delivery platform in Belgium to Fediverse to institutional bricolage. All in all, this is an interesting and varied collection well worth a read.