These two concepts seem to be used together in different scenarios, with different relationships indicated; such as "platforms as “data infrastructures that facilitate, aggregate, monetize and govern interactions between end-users and content and service providers” (Poell et al., 2021, p. 5)", whereas infrastructuration of platforms by J.-C. Plantin.
How are these two concepts defined in the literature? and any more lit that puts these two concepts together?
Hi June Wang ,
I came across this article which provides a clearer and discerning position: Swist, T.; Magee, L.; Phuong, J.; Sweeting, D. (2017): The labour of communicating publics: Participatory platforms, socio-technical intermediaries and pluralistic expertise. In Communication and the Public 2 (3), pp. 210–225. DOI: 10.1177/2057047317719294.
The authors draw on the works of others to highlight social (softer / less phyical) dimensions of infrastructure.
I guess where and how you draw the lines depends on if you are coming from a civil versus a software engineering perspective. More urban, social, and planning relevant frames are diversifying the ways we conflate or link "platform" and "infrastructure". The fact that these specific ways to carve out our definitions might mix in broader discourses for Smart Cities, eGovernance, Participation definitely muddies up the definition...
Hope this helps!
Robin
Thank you so much, Robin. I will download the paper and read it soon.
I guess what I attempt to understand is the first of the line between (certainly porous or even mutually constitutive) platformization and infrastructuration, I am trying to understand how platforms reshape urban space and more, the logic of organising (intra and inter) urban areas, and the value of assessing human subjects.
In particular, I am thinking Bratton's concept of the interface, which is a very expansive one to stress the chain effect, so that interface actually entails the interface design of apps, human hands, cables, highways and delivery men, etc. In a way, it almost reads like an infrastructure. pls shed light on this.
thanks a lot!
Best, June
Hi June
You mentioned Plantin but I don't know if you've seen this paper by Plantin et al, which has a nice table comparing features of infrastructures and platforms:
Plantin, Jean-Christophe, Carl Lagoze, Paul N Edwards, and Christian Sandvig. 2018. ‘Infrastructure Studies Meet Platform Studies in the Age of Google and Facebook’. New Media & Society 20 (1): 293–310. doi:10.1177/1461444816661553.
I don't think that the importance of economic use of data (Srnicek 2016; Langley & Leyshon 2017; Zuboff 2019) is mentioned in Plantin et al though, or at least not in the table.
It's not geography literature but you might find some useful juxtaposition and differentiation of infrastructure/platform in Westermeier's work on platformization of payments:
Westermeier, Carola. 2020. ‘Money Is Data – the Platformization of Financial Transactions’. Information, Communication & Society 23 (20): 2047–2063. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2020.1770833.
Westermeier, Carola. 2022. ‘From Flows towards Updates: Security Regimes and Changing Technologies for Financial Surveillance’. Review of International Studies, November, 1–22. doi:10.1017/S0260210522000493.
Apologies if you've already seen all of these!
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