New Media & Society

This article calls for systematic analysis of the accumulation and exercise of institutional platform power in the digital economy. We examine how the relatively open mobile advertising ecosystem is nevertheless dominated by a handful of platform conglomerates, most prominently Google, Facebook, and Apple. Although extant scholarship acknowledges the concentration of corporate power in digital advertising, as well as its cultural, societal, and environmental harms, a comprehensive approach to platform power is missing. Providing a framework to develop such insights, we analyze how shifts in the advertising ecosystem are driven by four interrelated institutional platform strategies: infrastructuralization, platformization, conglomeration, and financialization. The 2021 introduction and subsequent rollout of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework serves as an example to demonstrate that even though institutional relationships of dependence are constantly evolving, control over infrastructural nodes tends to entrench the already dominant position of leading platform conglomerates.

We outline the concept of ‘architectures of assetization’ as a way to get at the political-economic configuration of datafication in higher education through the layering of educational technology (‘edtech’) onto existing, legacy infrastructures. Edtech provides a useful empirical object of study because of the increasing deployment of new digital technologies in educational organizations; our focus is on higher education institutions (i.e. universities) in the United Kingdom. The empirical analysis is split between a discussion of digital infrastructures and architectures of (data) assetization in higher education; the tensions arising between new digital infrastructures and legacy infrastructures in UK higher education institutions; and the implications of reconfiguring legacy infrastructures for UK universities. We pay particular attention to the creation of new techno-economic objects, especially the transformation of personal and user data into an asset, as datafication transforms higher education in unexpected and not necessarily beneficial ways.

This article presents a novel methodology to examine the tracking infrastructures that extend datafication across a sample of 14 menopause-related applications. The Software Development Kit (SDK) Data Audit is a mixed methodology that explores how personal data are accessed in apps using ChatGPT4o to account for how digital surveillance transpires via SDKs. Our research highlights that not all apps are equal amid ubiquitous datafication, with a disproportionate number of SDK services provided by Google, Meta, and Amazon. Our three key findings include: (1) an empirical approach for auditing SDKs; (2) a means to account for modular SDK infrastructure; and (3) the central role that App Events—micro-data points that map every action we make inside of apps—play in the data-for-service economy that SDKs enable. This work is intended to open up space for more critical research on the tracking infrastructures of datafication within our apps in any domain.

This article explores how the political–economic balancing of state interests and potential state intervention influences everyday perceptions of platform companies in China. We introduce the term “flexibility imaginary” to describe the adaptability and responsiveness exhibited by our research participants in Hangzhou amid changing conditions and unforeseen transitions. Focusing on the flexibility imaginary aids in unpacking the assumptions, values, and expectations embedded in how societies deal with uncertainty and transformation. By zooming in on the notion of replaceability as a key feature of the flexibility imaginary, we explain how platform companies have become integral yet are still seen as transient elements of daily life. We demonstrate that while the flexibility imaginary shapes local interpretations and political dynamics, it does not challenge the state–corporate digital paradigm that underpins everyday existence. Understanding these limits is crucial for exploring future developments.

Chatbots have become a mundane experience for Internet users. Public sector institutions have recently been introducing more advanced chatbots. In this article, we consider two cases of public sector chatbots, one in Estonia and one in Sweden, seeking to challenge the seemingly coherent understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public sector. The aim is to both question the “thingness” of AI and show AI chatbots can be very different things. The material in this article is based on in-depth interviews and observations at public sector institutions that have relatively recently implemented chatbots. We employ the notion of AI frictions as a sensitizing concept to engage with the material and the diverging character of the public sector chatbots in the two countries. In the analysis, we identify AI frictions related to expectations of AI, organizational logics, as well as values connected with the digitalization of the public sector.

This article critically examines the social implications of data infrastructures designed to moderate contested content categories such as disinformation. It does so in the context of new online safety regulation (e.g. the EU Digital Services Act) that pushes digital platforms to improve how they tackle both illegal and ‘legal but harmful’ content. In particular, we investigate and conceptualise X’s Community Notes, a tool that uses ‘human-AI cooperation’ to add context to tweets, as a data infrastructure for ‘soft moderation’. We find that Community Notes is limited when dealing with under-acknowledged online harms, such as those derived from the intersection between disinformation and humour. While research points to the potential of content moderation solutions that combine automation with humans-in-the-loop, we show how this approach can fail when disinformation is poorly defined in policy and practice.

This article asks how our capacities to conduct critical research on digital power are influenced by depending, empirically and methodologically, on powerful market actors controlling the underlying research infrastructure. Building on discussions at the intersection between digital methods, political economy and infrastructure studies, we zoom in on three cases of widely used commercial data tools and repositories for academic studies. Mapping out their methods and applications, we ask of each case: Who owns and offers it? What is (not) measured? And, how is it mobilized in existing research? We thereby explore how they each contribute to the construction of knowledge by setting the standards for measuring, monitoring and ultimately regulating digital power. We conclude that the constructions of digital research infrastructures should be placed at the centre of our investigations – as objects of analysis and as research findings in and by themselves.

Digital nomads (DNS) are highly mobile professionals who work while traveling and travel while working. Their lifestyle has gained increasing academic attention, also from a communication perspective. Despite initial work on the topic, little is known about the self-presentation practices of DNs on social media. To address this lack of evidence and focusing on Instagram as a key platform for this group, we adopt a Goffmanian perspective. By using semi-structured interviews, we provide an in-depth analysis of their self-presentational practices, specifically their content strategies, imagined audience, and use of platform affordances. The interviews included photo elicitation as a central element. The findings show how DNs highlight independence and freedom, de-emphasize work in favour of leisure and travel, develop audience management strategies that are mindful of the imagined audiences' situation, while trying to foster reliability and authenticity and greatly value the flexibility and ephemerality of the Stories feature.

This article introduces a special issue exploring emerging empirical approaches to studying infrastructures for datafication and their social, political, and economic implications. The merits of empirical research on infrastructures for datafication are drawn out across seven articles offering diverse methodological entry points to develop our understanding of how datafication processes operate across everyday life settings, sectors, and institutions. The contributions span multiple levels of infrastructural analysis, from tracking ecologies to digital platforms and chatbots. They also cover a range of core questions regarding the relationship and power dynamics between private and public institutions, and between big technology companies and everyday citizenhood. In illuminating how infrastructures for datafication operate, for whom and with what ends, the special issue extends a fruitful dialogue between infrastructure studies and people-centric approaches to datafication and opens avenues for infrastructure research across disciplines to create more coherent understandings of how specific technological operations shape social life.

This study examines how journalists are grappling with platform migration following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitterin October 2022. Using a mixed-method approach that combines computational analysis of the activities of 861 journalists on Twitter and Mastodon with qualitative interviews of 11 active journalists, this study aims to (1) examine the extent to which journalists have exhibited different forms of Twitter disengagement post-acquisition; (2) identify the motivating and discouraging factors influencing their move, guided by the push-pull-mooring model; and (3) explore how journalists managed their online presence across platforms. The results indicated minimal Twitter non-use following Musk’s takeover, and full migration was not observed within a 6-month post-acquisition period. Factors such as the flood of fake news and the loss of the blue-tick verification served as push factors, while the appeal of Mastodon’s enhanced user control and stronger community values acted as pull factors. However, the practical reliance on Twitter’s functionalities, audience base, and professional obligations made total abandonment challenging.

This study examines how digital nationalism distorts the articulation of feminism on China’s popular video-sharing platform, BiliBili. Through a discourse analysis of the 100 most-viewed user-generated videos tagged with “feminism” ( nüquan ), we find that BiliBili’s unique sociotechnical context, functioning both as a cultural platform and as a conduit for state propaganda, creates a space where various forms of nationalism—including anti-consumerism, anti-Western liberalism, and Sinocentric nationalism/chauvinism toward East Asian neighbors—intersect with discussions of feminism. Consequently, feminism on BiliBili gains virality only insofar as it does not appear “contradictory” to state-sponsored ideological slogans, norms, and notions of national identity. This article demonstrates how a seemingly participatory and free discursive space for user-generated content can, in fact, constrain women’s agency in negotiating the very concept of feminism, limiting their ability to articulate struggles and diversify narratives.

This paper examines children's digital experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic as a specific aspect of digital divide. Utilizing a survey of 2,004 English parents aged 20 to 55, the study explores how various factors-including household living conditions, parents' sociodemographic status, and sociotechnical variables such as children's usage frequency and intensity, expenditure on technology, and parents' digital skills-affect different dimensions of children's digital experiences during the lockdown. These dimensions include academic performance, connectivity issues, social interaction, feelings of isolation, problematic use, and social support. The findings reveal distinct age-related trends, with older children more frequently engaging in online socialization. Additionally, the study highlights a correlation between more favourable household socioeconomic conditions and improved digital experiences for children.

This article considers how children’s memeability is entangled with commercial sharenting narratives through two case studies of (mothers) influencers and their daughters in Brazil and Portugal. The Brazilian mother privileges cute aesthetics by enchantment in an inspirational sharenting and does not promote the child’s memeability. In contrast, the Portuguese influencer privileges cringe aesthetics, encouraging her daughter’s memeability by exploring the ambivalence of parenting with humor in a transgressive sharenting. The findings point to the unpredictability and uncontrollability of the memetic culture. In Brazil, the child’s image was appropriated for playful and parodic engagement, neglecting her privacy, reputation, and well-being despite her mother’s public complaint. This unauthorized memeability results from the girl’s celebrification after her display in viral content and advertising campaigns. In contrast, the encouraged memeability of the Portuguese influencer does not exceed her community of followers since her daughter’s recognition seems limited to an extension of the mother’s self.

Public communication change (PCC) is often studied in communication research with a somewhat narrow conceptual focus, for instance, either on the contingency or on the determination of communication development. I argue that instead of considering the various extant theoretical approaches as competing and irreconcilable, the field should strive for a holistic understanding that helps integrate them. I consider PCC as a process that unfolds over time in complex multilevel dynamics between macro-level structural transformations and the decisions and resulting behaviors of individual and collective actors. I propose a structure–actor model of PCC that accounts for both, determined and contingent processes simultaneously. It is also able to explain the emergence of paradox phenomena and collective misjudgments despite better knowledge. I conclude by using examples from the context of the “filter bubble” phenomenon to illustrate the heuristic value of the developed model and sketch an empirical research agenda that follows from its arguments.

This study investigates the performance of search engine chatbots powered by large language models in generative political information retrieval. Applying algorithmic accountability as a central theme, this research (a) assesses the alignment of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot responses with timely political information, (b) investigates the factual correctness and transparency of chatbot-sourced synopses, (c) examines the adherence of chatbots to democratic norms and impartiality ideals, (d) analyzes the sourcing and attribution behaviors of the chatbots, and (e) explores the universality of chatbot gatekeeping across different languages. Using the 2024 Taiwan presidential election as a case study and prompting as a method, the study audits responses from Microsoft Copilot in five languages. The findings reveal significant discrepancies in information readiness, content accuracy, norm adherence, source usage, and attribution behavior across languages. These results underscore the contextual awareness when applying accountability assessment that looks beyond transparency in AI-mediated communication, especially during politically sensitive events.

Drawing from interviews with 39 online extremism and terrorism researchers, this article provides an empirical analysis of these researchers’ experiences with institutional ethics processes. Discussed are the harms that these researchers face in the course of their work, including trolling, doxing, and mental and emotional trauma arising from exposure to terrorist content, which highlight the need for an emphasis on researcher welfare. We find that researcher welfare is a neglected aspect of ethics review processes however, with most interviewees not required to gain ethics approval for their research resulting in very little attention to researcher welfare issues. Interviewees were frustrated with ethics processes, indicating that committees oftentimes lacked the requisite knowledge to make informed ethical decisions. Highlighted by interviewees too was a concern that greater emphasis on researcher welfare could result in blockages to their ‘risky’ research, creating a ‘Catch 22’: interviewees would like more emphasis on their (and colleagues’) welfare and provision of concomitant supports, but feel that increased oversight would make gaining ethics approval for their research more difficult, or even impossible. We offer suggestions for breaking the impasse, including more interactions between ethics committees and researchers; development of tailored guidelines; and more case studies reflecting on ethics processes.

The rapid advancement of AI has led to increased reliance on data labeling workers, yet those with disabilities remain understudied in this context. This article applies critical disability studies and theory of accumulation by dispossession to analyze the dynamics within China’s data labeling industry. We examine the interplay among capital, central and local governments, Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs), and workers with disabilities in the AI data labeling value chain. Our findings highlight the pivotal role of DPOs in reallocating surplus labor and capital across spatial and temporal dimensions. By supplementing functions traditionally associated with government entities, these organizations significantly influence the industry’s landscape. Furthermore, we reveal how DPOs foster labor agency, creating spaces for work dignity among workers with disabilities. Through their efforts to navigate and mitigate algorithmic control, DPOs contribute to a more inclusive labor environment, challenging societal norms.

This article delves into the process of technological adaptation to local environments by presenting the case of food delivery platforms in Mexico City. Primarily, it focuses on the tension between design and local economic practices. Given the primacy of cash as an object of economic exchange, platforms facilitate cash payments. Platforms then delegate the task of cash administration to couriers. Labor control around this task is then institutionalized in the form of platform features. Furthermore, platform dependency to cover basic necessities shapes divergent experiences of the delegated task of cash administration. Conceptually, this article employs the Latourian concept of delegation to explore the human and nonhuman enrollments mobilized to adapt digital technologies to local environments.

Veneration of paternal ancestors plays an important role in Chinese tradition. In this article, we offer some speculations about how a new ‘thanatechnology’ – digital personality emulation – may impact on ancestor worship. We explore the ethical issues raised by the use of personality emulations for this purpose, drawing on Confucian, Daoist and contemporary Anglo-American perspectives. For Confucians, the key questions concern the extent to which this technology automates the task of remembering and whether it is corrosive of filial piety. Daoists might be critical of personality emulations owing to a larger disagreement with Confucians about the role of ritual in a good human life. Finally, recent discussions in the Anglo-American literature suggest that the use of this technology would raise questions about the consent of the deceased to emulation, the privacy of users, the danger that users will be manipulated by the designers and/or manufacturers of emulations, and the impact of emulations on the grieving process.

Rankings are a well-established genre for evaluating diverse phenomena, yet culturally resonant critiques of them are relatively rare. This paper examines how student vloggers on YouTube challenge and reinterpret university rankings through ‘tier list’ and ‘reaction’ videos, thereby shifting genre expectations. Through a move analysis of 30 such videos, we identify 3 rhetorical actions – making sense of ranking, audience interpellation and subverting the ranking genre – and discuss how the ranking’s remediation simultaneously rejects and reinforces hierarchy as the social form underlying it. This results in often humorous critiques where vloggers challenge ‘objective’ cardinal assumptions and posit rank as collaboratively constructed. Remediation in social media has the potential to not only make visible genre work performed by the genre’s discursive community, but in doing so also reconfigures the rhetorical premises that characterise the ranking genre in the first place.

The mobile app BeReal, launched in 2020, has gained popularity for its emphasis on authenticity, spontaneity, and real-time daily interactions with close ties, earning it the label of “anti-Instagram.” However, empirical evidence on its relationship with well-being is currently lacking. This study uses a quasi-experimental two-wave design to examine the relationship between BeReal use duration and well-being indicators. Results suggest that long-term BeReal use is linked to higher friendship satisfaction, positively influencing life satisfaction. In addition, long-term use is associated with reduced fear of missing out and connection overload compared to short-term use, suggesting BeReal may enhance well-being possibly by facilitating daily interactions with close ties, limiting usage time, and providing a more authentic representation of everyday life compared to other social media platforms.

Platforms have disintermediated the markets for books, film, television, and music, but the online art market has reproduced offline structures, leaving intermediaries intact. This study explores the limits of platforms by describing why disintermediation failed in the art market. Along with museums and other intermediaries, the most important function of galleries is to co-create artistic value. They not only sell art but also form a central part of the status system of art. We examine #artistsupportpledge (ASP) on Instagram. ASP uncovered a market for art that had no place in the existing system. ASP facilitated direct sales to consumers while allowing artists to maintain links to galleries for reputation, career development, exhibitions, and sales of large, expensive work. The art market experienced unique partial disintermediation under narrow conditions with continued allegiance to existing intermediaries and status structures. We conclude by discussing four implications for the theory of platforms.

This article examines emergent communities of platform-based delivery workers in Bangkok by applying Max Weber’s concept of Vergemeinschaftung or ‘doing community’. Using offline and online ethnographic methods, the authors demonstrate how delivery workers do community on the streets of Bangkok and leverage smartphones and social media to extend their communities to the online realm. These community practices are culturally constituted and share characteristics with pre-existing communities in the transportation sector in Thailand. However, while these older communities are under pressure from rationalisation, or in Weber’s terms, Vergesellschaftung, rider communities emerge from the rational conditions of delivery platforms. Through this analysis, the article demonstrates how Weber’s theory effectively captures the dialectical dynamics of doing community and rationalisation in digital economies, suggesting that scholarship on digital platforms and media could benefit from adopting a Weberian analysis of social change.

Digital communication venues are essential infrastructures for anti-democratic actors to spread harmful content such as conspiracy theories. Capitalizing on platform affordances, they leverage conspiracy theories to mainstream their political views in broader public discourse. We compared the word choice, language style, and communicative function of conspiracy-related content to understand its platform-dependent differences and convergence. Our cases are the conspiracy theories of the New World Order and Great Replacement, which we analyzed on 4chan/pol/, Twitter, and seven alternative US news media longitudinally from 2011 to 2021. The conspiracy-related texts were comparatively analyzed using a multi-method approach of computational and quantitative text analyses. Our results show that conspiracy narrations are increasingly present in all venues. While language differs vastly between platforms, we observed a style convergence between Twitter and 4chan. The results show how more coded language veils the spread of racist and antisemitic content beyond the so-called dark platforms.

Nonhuman life is increasingly analyzed and acted upon through big data and AI tools. Birds in particular are among the most datafied wild beings. However, avian—like human—data sets present challenges of bias, misclassification, and harmful collection methods. For example, avian data includes bias along lines of sex and sexuality, female, queer, and intersex birds are significantly understudied. These missing birds not only represent consequences for biodiversity loss but also “naturalize” assumptions about sex and sexuality for all species, including humans. In this article, we interrogate avian datafication practices and introduce Salvaging Birds, a multimodal project proposing “queer data surrogacy” as a method for generating “queer ecological data,” that is data resisting normative environmental frameworks. Here queer data surrogates were produced by creatively subverting AI toward generating speculative missing birds. Bridging critical data and archival studies with queer ecology, we argue that data logics demand examination at nonhuman sites and scales.