Abstract
This decade has seen many books on digital platform, which broadly represent two different views on platform economy and disciplinary divergence. On one side, many management studies scholars call it “platform revolution” or “innovative disruption”; on the other, many social scientists see it as a system that is in the process of diffusing the legacy institutions and practices. The book under review, The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World, by José Van Dijck, Thomas Poell and Martijn De Waal, designates current society as “platform society” having inescapable relationship between the online platforms and societal structure, and adds the dimension of the socio-moral responsibility to the present literature. The book talks about the platform society’s perspectival shift from mere economic to social dimensions, highlighting the dispute between individual private gains and public benefits. Platforms have penetrated into societies to become its integral part, enough to compel states to adjust their legal and democratic sub-structures resulting in the emergence of the new social structure. This book draws on the evidence from the North America and Western Europe. As the platform society is a global phenomenon, the understanding generated can be of great value for rest of the world with prevalent functional platform economy. The authors observe that the recent technological advancements have great potential for promoting public value. The privately run platforms have access to and familiarity with these advancements and are substantial in terms of their size and reach. They, contrary to the popular belief, are neither neutral nor value free, but follow particular set of ideology. They have particular norms and values engraved within it, which may clash with host societies’ values if the society, where it plans to compete, does not share the same values. Platforms are better placed than most of the traditional institutions to make a social difference. Therefore, the authors call for a partnership between the social actors for working towards advancement of public values.
The book can be divided into three parts. The first part, including the first two chapters, builds the foundation for the rest of the book. This part contains a detailed understanding on digital platform and explores platform society as a contested concept. The platform ecosystem is filled with paradoxes; they attempt at appearing egalitarian when they are hierarchical, presenting themselves as serving public values but being run for corporate gains, and likes. There is a continuous tussle between the authorities and these platforms with constant bargaining between private gains and pubic interests. This is elaborated in the book in the European states’ context. European markets are currently negotiating between neo-liberal market and democratic collective at various fronts. These can be validated by various legal cases of dispute between the state and platform being run in the internal court (for antitrust charges, breach of privacy, preferential tax treatment and like). The authors assert that the only time platforms realise their accountability and responsibility is when they lose their customers. They still put forward themselves as social actors who take their responsibility of public value as seriously as a government. The book examines platform at different levels—micro-level (single platforms), meso-level (platform ecosystem) and macro-level (platform societies). Platform is divided into two types, that is, the infrastructural core and sectoral platforms. The infrastructural platforms are core of the platform on which the sectoral platforms and other apps are built and function, whereas the sectoral platforms serve particular sectors. The connective platforms link different organizations in the market and comprise of complementors, the organizations or individuals, who provide products or services to end users. Theoretically, all new platforms are allowed to compete but in reality, there is little room for competition as all the platforms require ecosystem’s infrastructural information services. Platforms that are outside the ecosystem hardly survive with requirement of features such as global connectivity, ubiquitous accessibility and network effects. The intermediaries become the point for raising issue of duality in work in the society—on one hand, it adds economic value to platform and, on the other hand, it individualizes the essentially social issues such as precarious labour, a fair level-playing field and public cost. The connective platforms use both public and private investments for their economic success. The situation has created hybrid status for platforms where they bypass regulations that are compulsory for legacy institutions to follow creating a legal and social grey area. This has major effects on public values and the common goods within society. The book highlights the complex interdependencies between state, market and civil society involving private interest and public values and emphasizes on the need for an effective regulatory mechanism. There are cases where government itself prefers collaborating with these platforms in dealing with immediate public concerns such as urban transport, healthcare and so on, ignoring the effect these platforms would have in the long run on the society. Public value is seen as the value that any organization puts within society, which enhances the common good in it. This, the writers emphasize, is not the sole responsibility of public sector but is a shared responsibility of all. The platform society confuses public value with creation of economic value. They, most of the times, claim to be working for the public, hiding their private interests behind their algorithms and business model. They pursue their interests under the veil of public value and presenting governments as an inefficient system coming in their way. In the platform ecosystem, the function of platforms are not limited to connecting the two parties, it extends to deciding the term of their connection and construction of new regimes and economies in the process. This leads to reshaping and intervening in value regimes and economies. The platforms themselves are not homogenous categories; the value system of the US-based platform is different from the China-based platform.
The first section details out different platform mechanisms, that is, datafication, commodification and selection. These work in interaction with technology, commercial strategies and user practices, in whose interplay the platform works. Datafication is the ability of networked platforms to quantify those aspects of the world that had previously never been quantified. The data generated by these platforms are first captured through various interactions within platforms and then circulated around in both parts and as a whole. Sectoral platforms are capturing personal interactions and economic exchanges through standard datafied practices while infrastructural platforms are amalgamating sectoral platform data. The data collected is circulated to third party through Application Programming Interface (API) and through user interface to end users. The platforms as connector, on one hand, commodifies user activity, while on other hand, exploits cultural labour, labour of user and precarization of on-demand service worker. Commodification deals with connecting infrastructural core and sectoral platform with a large section of complementors. The platform ecosystem deals with multisided markets where users deal with advertisers as well as with service providers or complementors. These platforms are not free of cost for their users; they generate revenue either through levying commission and transaction fee or by acquiring freemium model. The expert-based selection, in online platform, is replaced with user-driven and algorithm driven selection. Although the platform presents its functioning as a democratic process, it is based on black-boxed techno-commercial strategies. The authors divide selections in three types, namely personalization, reputations and trend, and moderations. Moderations lead to controversy when the platform moderates either too much or too little by using automated detection technology and human moderators or editors. The authors explain that the introduction of new social categories and selection mechanisms by platforms lead to reorganization of value regimes and economies.
Second part of the book demonstrates the arguments developed in the first two chapters taking up two types of market-based and two public-based sectors as the case. The former includes sectoral platforms in news and urban transport, and the latter includes sectoral platforms in healthcare and health research, and education. The four chapters, in the second part, deal with platform mechanisms to understand the platform ecosystem (assemblage of networked platforms) and power relationship within them. This part describes the working of these platforms in detail and discusses the contemporary debates and issues around these. The cases further the understanding on the evolving society informed by emerging relationships between platforms and various social actors.
News industry has witnessed platformization of news, which has put pressure on values of journalism that were considered vital for the industry. The platform ecosystem runs singularly around public attention. The bundling of news stories and advertisements practiced in the legacy newspaper agencies has changed with changing dynamics of news industry with people consuming isolated news items. Besides the news content that was previously generated by the respective news organizations is now generated by different agencies. The book discusses the issue of quantified audience and quantified user demand determining what was previously determined by editors. This has led to both data driven news production and distribution and datafying of legacy news organization. The book shares new means of curating content in news with new features like democratic content curation.
The section on urban transport explores the impact on platformization on the entire sector blurring the division between public and private arrangement and their arrangements shifting. It talks in detail about the emergence of platform ecology for urban transportation supporting various examples of the platforms. Urban transport is looked from various lenses in detail. This includes detailed examination of datafication and integration of public and private modes of urban transport, and looking at different aspects of commodification of urban transport. The book also includes different regulations applied on urban transport based platforms and their reputation system. While exploring healthcare and health research, there is a complete focus on various healthcare platform-based apps that are prevalent in the market. The section explores different applications in detail and simultaneously looks at their impact on both individuals and the society as a whole. The section also explores a few controversial aspects associated with the platform society through these applications. Further, the section on education elaborates the access of platform in the field of education. It has positive aspects such as various open sources of education but like other platforms, this too has various drawbacks. The book in detail explores a few popular application platforms which are successfully functioning. It extensively talks about platform including the fact that open does not mean free.
The last part of the book is dedicated to the discussion on making platforms responsible. The book explores the powers of technology and the capacity of platform to mould the population. The part draws attention to a need for delegating responsibility to different social actors and requirement of value centric design of the platform. It explores the on-going tussle between the social actors in platform society in order to perfect platforms’ working and proposes a compromise for advancement of public values. The book ends with a note that provides a general idea of requirements for the cooperation between state, civil society and market for the successful functioning of platform.
The book offers the readers with empirical and updated view of the platform world. It provides with detailed information and articulates issues in an easy-read form. The writers are majorly from media studies background. They have attempted to give an inter-disciplinary viewpoint on the subject. It would have been better if the book had dealt with various theoretical perspectives to inform readers about various social interpretations on the subject. The book, overall, is a great starting point for professionals from all disciplines who wish to understand and further work on platform society.
The book is useful on the subject than many others which in order to explain the working of platform either get into too much of technical details which are beyond comprehension of an ordinary reader and or miss out entirely on the technical aspect. It leaves the readers with a question on the future of the platform society. The writers though do not offer a clear solution, successfully elaborate and analyse the prevailing situation.