Course Spotlight - IR220: Digital Platforms: Power, Politics and Resistance

We interviewed Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin, Director of Summer School course IR220: Digital Platforms: Power, Politics and Resistance, who explains the rapidly growing power of digital platforms in today’s society and gives insight into the fascinating topics students will discuss in his course.

 

What is a digital platform and how do they affect everyday life?

We are by now used to using platforms in our everyday life, and we thoroughly enjoy them when it comes to finding a car, getting a meal delivered, buying a train ticket, etc. However, the very definition of digital platforms is surprisingly difficult and really depends on who you ask. For economists, it is an intermediary that create a market between at least two parties; for legal scholars, it is a legal entity that shapes the exchange of labour, goods, and data, possibly without the appropriate oversight; for communication scholars, it is a mediation that shapes the circulation of meanings. The history of platforms is equally plural, and communication researchers have traced it back to older media like video games, video cassettes, or even the automotive industry. You understand my point: platforms are defined by their plasticity and their capacity to generate something new—a transaction, a social practice, a media—whose exact form is not known in advance. In IR220, we will review and engage with these various definitions of digital platform to provide students with the right tools to define and understand these complex entities.

What role do platforms play in global geopolitics?

What is fascinating is how platforms take different forms across various countries—just think about the variety of apps we find on a phone in the US or Europe vs. the centrality of the single application Weixin (or WeChat as it is known internationally) with its suite of internal apps. What is equally interesting is how platforms are companies that exist within different legal and economic configurations across the globe—think again of the differences between the very libertarian Silicon Valley model of platforms (which we know via Meta, Google, etc.) vs. a deeper involvement of the Chinese government in the creation and management of its unicorn companies (Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu). The increasing rise of internet sovereignty across the globe i.e., the desire of nation states to have a deeper control over what platforms operate over their jurisdiction (exemplified by the ban of Meta or Google in China or Russia, but also by the constraints over data storage in Europe or Australasia) places tech companies at the centre of the tension between transnational flow of data and a stricter national control by states.

What has the history of platforms taught us so far?

If we look at how large platforms have gained their massive scales in the past 15 years, we see a pattern through which a few key actors manage to gain early on a comparative advantage over competitors (usually by relying on extensive users’ data extraction) to eventually reach a position of quasi-monopoly. They then maintain this status by acquiring (or suing) new competitors and integrating their product, teams, database, etc. This strategy is best exemplified with Facebook (now Meta) acquiring WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. This pattern reinforces what is called a first-mover advantage: there is simply no room left for the next Google, Facebook, etc., which will invent the platforms of tomorrow. Governments and international organisations are increasingly aware of this lesson from recent history and consider this position unfair as it stifles competitions and threaten user’s rights.

How can disruptive technologies such as ChatGPT affect the future of digital platforms?

What is fascinating to me about ChatGPT is how it is massively disrupting other powerful platforms specialised in managing information. For example, Google or Wikipedia see their (very different) positions as organizers of the world’s knowledge contested by a very well-designed, powerful, and easy-to-use AI service. It is even more cruel for Google as it has been working very hard to become the leader of AI with massive investment in infrastructure and expertise via its Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab!

Beyond the dramatic claims that ChatGPT will make these companies obsolete, what is more plausible and interesting to see is how existing platforms will develop their own versions of AI bots (so far with mixed success for some e.g., Google) or include ChatGPT into their own ecosystems (like Microsoft is doing with its Office suite, Outlook and Bing).

What is the most fascinating thing students will learn in the classroom?

They will learn that platforms are older and more different than they might at first think. They will also learn that we should study platforms as ecosystems i.e., relying on equally important technologies such as AI, algorithms, software for database management, etc. Finally, they will realise how the same “recipe” for platform success is applied across various social sectors, albeit with different results, users’ risks and sometimes failure.

Besides the content, the course is going to be so much fun! My amazing colleagues Dylan Mulvin and Omar Al-Ghazzi and I already enjoy working together, and we are really excited about collaborating further by co-teaching this new course. We all come with our specific expertise and cases, which will lead the students to learn about many aspects of the platform society.

Are there opportunities to work in groups or on contemporary case studies you would like to highlight?

Seminars will be all about group work and contemporary cases. They will provide hands-on engagement with key texts on the platform society via group discussions or analysis of important texts. They will also analyse together contemporary cases of social issues involving platforms via group work, town-hall simulations, and critical analysis of databases or maps of subsea cables.

The lectures will involve a little more talking from the teacher, but do not worry, we certainly won’t talk for three hours straight every morning! We have designed the lectures to include a variety of media, such as films, social media posts, references to news items or industry reports, but also time for Q&A. Our main goal for lectures and seminars is to have the students learn by doing.