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PLATCAP_HISTORY
March 3, 2025
So what's the history of the term
"platform captialism"?
There was a book "Platform Capitalism" You might think you could search
by Nick Srnicek that came out in 2016. on the quoted term "platform
capitalism" restricted by ranges
It's not hard to find earlier uses of years to quickly pin down
thoughout the twenty-teens, by when the term was coined.
messing with Google Scholar
searches, for example. Such searches also include hits
that don't seem to include the
phrase, and some hits that come
from outside the time range.
Because of course.
Here's one from 2014:
https://networkcultures.org/mycreativity/2014/10/16/never-mind-the-sharing-economy-heres-platform-capitalism/
"Never Mind the Sharing Economy: Here’s Platform Capitalism" (2014)
by sebastian olma
And this references
"Sascha Lobo, a German technology blogger for Der Spiegel"
"Der Konflikt um den Fahrdienst Uber illustriert einen globalen
Trend. Was oft als Sharing Economy bezeichnet wird, ist in
Wirklichkeit ein euphemistisch benannter Aspekt einer neuen
digitalen Wirtschaftsordnung: des Plattform-Kapitalismus."
https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/sascha-lobo-sharing-economy-wie-bei-uber-ist-plattform-kapitalismus-a-989584.html
But even before this, from 2013, there's a piece that looks like its
doing a funny variation, riffing off of an existing phrase:
Joss Hands, "Platform Communism"
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joss-Hands/publication/361332824_Platform_Communism/links/62ab180be1193368baa08fad/Platform-Communism.pdf
"... shall explore here what the communist hypothesis
offers for defining what a ‘platform communism’ might look
like. The focus on digital platforms is a vital element in
understanding the new media ecology in which we are all now
captured. Platforms are simply where the people are, where
the power lies and where capital is most fully
engaged. Dealing with platform politics requires more than
just the taxonomic analysis of platforms; it should also
include looking at alternative practices and the pragmatics
of antagonism and collective modes of production."
A similar riff is played in this piece from (I think) 2014 or so:
Trebor Scholz, "Platform Cooperativism vs the Sharing Economy"
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicolas-Douay/publication/321777389_Big_Data_Civic_Engagement/links/5a3153b3aca27271447b66b6/Big-Data-Civic-Engagement.pdf#page=47
Trying to trace the phrase back further though, I see this
publication from 2015 has a good discussion of something from 2010,
working over the phrase "platform" if not "platform capitalism":
Anne Helmond, "The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready"
https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115603080
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305115603080
Cites a key discussion from 2010 by Gillespie of the term "Platform"
and refers to it extensively:
"The term 'platform' has become the dominant concept for social
media companies for positioning themselves in the market and
addressing users, and it has been widely taken up by consumers and
the press (Gillespie, 2010)."
Gillespie (2010) on the new meaning of Web 2.0 'platforms':
"This more conceptual use of 'platform' leans on all of the
term’s connotations: computational, something to build upon and
innovate from; political, a place from which to speak and be
heard; figurative, in that the opportunity is an abstract
promise as much as a practical one; and architectural, in that
YouTube is designed as an open-armed, egalitarian facilitation
of expression, not an elitist gatekeeper with normative and
technical restrictions."
Anne Hemond:
"Gillespie is describing what in economics Jean-Charles Rochet and
Jean Tirole (2003) call the business model of a 'multi-sided
market,' in which a platform enables interactions between two or
more distinct parties. Facebook is an example of a multi-sided
platform that connects users, advertisers, and third-party
developers and experiences network effects where value increases
for all parties as more people use it (Hagiu, 2014)."
"Within this economics and management literature, Annabelle
Gawer argues, platforms have often been theorized from two
distinct perspectives: 'economic theory conceptualizes platforms
as markets (Rochet & Tirole, 2003),' whereas 'engineering design
theorizes them as ‘modular technological architectures’ (Baldwin &
Woodard, 2009)' (Gawer, 2014, p. 1240)."
"Bogost and Montfort (2009) ... see the platform, in its
computational sense, as an understudied layer of new media (Bogost
& Montfort, 2009). To address this blind spot, Montfort and Bogost
(2009) introduce 'platform studies,' a call for a 'technical rigor
and in-depth investigation of how computing technologies work'
(p. vii) to analyze 'the connection between technical specifics
and culture' (Bogost and Montfort 2009)."
The abstract for Gillespie's "The politics of 'platforms'" (2010):
"Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning
themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making
strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their
place in the information landscape should be understood. One term
in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive
work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals
and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’,
sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as
‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all
of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits
their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek
protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited
liability for what those users say. As these providers become the
curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim
to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged."
So, one of the key scholars cites youtube's marketing as the
main source of this usage of the term "platform".
No wonder it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me.
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