Engaging Platforms in Open Scholarship/Social Implications of Platforms

Critical Perspectives: Power, Platformization, and Labour Adema, Janneke, Gary Hall, Fitzpatrick Kathleen, Aventurier Pascal, and Parry David. 2015. Really, We’re Helping To Build This . . . Business: The Academia.edu Files. Liquid Books. http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/106236504/The%20Academia_edu%20Files. In this compilation of files, 11 authors critique Academia.edu and other dot-com sites that present themselves as open access platforms while taking investments from venture capitalists they will eventually have to pay back. The authors see Academia.edu as an extremely influential company that is poised to collect—and potentially exploit—a tremendous amount of data. They argue that Academia.edu’s efficacy and longevity may ultimately be compromised by its profit-driven model and the kinds of actions that such a model can engender. The authors see sites like Academia.edu as a problematic form of academic social media in which increased user participation builds social capital within a network of competition for recognition, often addressing this function in terms of the Foucauldian “technologies of the self.” Finally, the authors gesture toward theorizing a more economically progressive academic social networking site that does not rely on venture capital investments, heralding the idea of commonly owned, open-source, and economically and socially progressive social media, which seeks to nurture/interact with scholarly research as a commons. Andersson Schwarz, Jonas. 2017. “Platform Logic: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Platform-Based Economy.” Policy and Internet 9 (4): 374–94. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.159. Andersson Schwarz argues that the power of platforms (‘platform power’) is only useful insofar as one considers the logic of platforms (dubbed “platform logic”) to examine the ways in which the economic, social, and political structures that arise from digital platforms intersect, as well as the results of these various intersections. Positioned within the field of digital economy, media studies, and political economy, the article highlights the importance of critically analyzing how platforms accumulate power and influence at multiple levels. For this endeavour, Andersson Schwarz proposes a model that maps the mechanisms of digital platforms in three levels: micro (the specificities of a platform), meso (the interconnections between platforms), and macro (the ecologies of mutual interplay and codependence among platforms that lead to corporate accumulation and market consolidation). Analyzing the connections between these three levels allows us to critique platform power while taking into account the technical reasons behind it. Birkinbine, Benjamin. 2020. Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software. London: University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.16997/book39. This book considers the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement, which Birkinbine argues is generally proclaimed to be a revolutionary development, one that supports greater autonomy on the part of contributors and users. Birkinbine seeks to intervene in this claim by presenting a critical examination of the relationship between FLOSS developer communities and the for-profit corporations that sponsor or appropriate FLOSS projects. The book’s central thesis is that free and open source software is caught in a seemingly paradoxical middle. On one side, communities of programmers work together to create open source software as a digital commons, free and findable for all. On the other side, for-profit corporations attempt to capture the value produced through these communities, by attempting to gain control of the processes of production, the products that result from these processes, and the spaces or markets that house these processes and products. While Birkinbine notes that the relationship between FLOSS communities and for-profit companies is not always antagonistic, it is certainly vulnerable to this dynamic, particularly in instances where the interests of the communities diverge from the interests of the for-profit companies. Ultimately, this book is a cautious exploration of the commons, specifically the digital commons, as a paradoxical alternative to capitalism because it presents opportunities to diverge from traditional (capitalistic) ways of producing and distributing value or resources. At the same time, the commons cannot be entirely separated from capitalism because it benefits from, interacts with, occasionally overlaps with, and emerges from within capitalism. As a result, the (digital) commons alone cannot be a comprehensive antidote to the inequities and harms exacerbated (if not brought on) by capitalism. However, as Birkinbine importantly underscores, it can be a part of broader strategies for resistance. Chan, Leslie and Pierre Mounier, eds. 2019. Connecting the Knowledge Commons—From Projects to Sustainable Infrastructure: The 22nd International Conference on Electronic Publishing—Revised Selected Papers. Marseille: OpenEdition Press. Chan’s introduction to Connecting the Knowledge Commons: From Projects to Sustainable Infrastructures draws together papers from the 2018 Electronic Publishing (ELPUB) conference, which has increasingly brought questions about open access to bear on the work of its diverse and internationally distributed members. Chan notes that recent efforts to theorize and implement open access publishing practices have foregrounded instances of epistemic injustice and inequity, as well as the extent to which open access remains both a disputed term and an internally conflicted area of scholarly activity. What is more, open access poses many still-unresolved questions about the future of academic publishers and their negotiation of public and private interests. In response, Chan embraces bibliodiversity as a productive, necessary entry point into broader discussions of publishing, information studies, and scholarly communication. This lens allows us to account for issues of structural and infrastructural imbalance that the author argues are central, not peripheral, to increasingly common discussions about openness in knowledge economies in a variety of global and institutional contexts. Couldry, Nick. "The Myth of ‘Us’: Digital Networks, Political Change, and the Production of Collectivity." Information, Communication & Society, vol. 18, no. 6, 2015, pp. 608-626. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.979216. Drawing on theories and critiques from studies in sociology and new media, Couldry examines assumptions that digital networks are transforming ‘the social’ by fostering new representations of togetherness, which Couldry terms “the myth of ‘us’.” Couldry argues that this social construction of togetherness is intentional, motivated by financial and commercial interests in scraping and selling the data derived from networking sites that rely on the myth to be successful. Although Couldry seems to agree with the premise that digital networking sites matter in a social sense, Couldry also asserts that there is a need to look harder at the longer-term implications of these sites, particularly in terms of policy-making (or breaking), if we are to understand not just why these sites may matter but also how. Couldry, Nick, and Ulises Ali Mejias. 2023. “The Decolonial Turn in Data and Technology Research: What Is at Stake and Where Is It Heading?” Information, Communication & Society 26 (4): 786–802. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1986102. Couldry and Mejias trace the evolution of the decolonial turn in critical technology and data studies, which analyzes the extraction of data for profit within the history of colonialism and its entanglement with capitalism and knowledge production throughout modernity. The authors overview similar ideas that predate the concept of data colonialism, such as digital colonialism and technocolonialism, but they point out that these concepts do not necessarily acknowledge the agency of people in the Global South to resist these extractive colonial processes nor the data extraction of marginalized populations in the Global North. In response, the decolonial turn provides an overall theory of data extractivism that contemplates practices in the Global North and South while connecting contemporary data practices to historic inequalities in the distribution of the world’s resources over the past five centuries. The data colonialism thesis claims that practices of data appropriation are a distinctive new type of resource extraction and a historic new phase of colonialism with a mode of dispossession through data. Under this view, digitization on its own does not cause a new form of colonialism until digital data is converted with a focus on generating profit. This perspective also recognizes the possibility that data extractivism may cause additional segmentations of the world’s resources that build upon and extend the racisms inherited from historical colonialism. The authors conclude that the decolonial turn and the data colonialism thesis offer the most comprehensive perspective to analyze the contemporary developments of data and technology. Doctorow, Cory. 2023. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. New York: Verso. Setting the tone for the remainder of the volume, Doctorow opens this short text with the following declaration: “This is a book for people who want to destroy Big Tech. It’s not a book for people who want to tame Big Tech. There’s no fixing Big Tech” (1). The means of destruction Doctorow proposes? Interoperability. Doctorow’s argument is that various kinds of interoperability (from reverse engineering to adopting formal standards) have immediate relevance and applicability in terms of policy, legal, technical, social, and commercial responses. The book is organized into two parts–the first focusing on addressing what interoperability is, how it works, and with methods for achieving interoperability. Picking up where the first part of the book ends, the second half focuses on mitigating some of the issues associated with interoperability, such as privacy, harassment, radicalization, blockchain and so on. Lastly, the book ends with some suggestions for further reading, viewing and listening for those interested in learning more. Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2015. “Academia, not Edu.” Really, We're Helping To Build This . . . Business: The Academia.edu Files. Liquid Books: Open Humanities Press. http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/106424037/Academia%2C%20Not%20Edu. Fitzpatrick reviews the problems with Academia.edu and the state of possible alternatives in 2015. The problem with Academia.edu, for Fitzpatrick, is that the corporation’s main objective is not to improve scholarly communication but to profit from it. She shares Gary Hall’s criticisms of Academia.edu’s exploitation of academic labour, and they both share a drive to pursue alternative platforms for sharing research in a way that subverts Academia.edu’s business model and competes with the ubiquitousness of Academia.edu’s network. While Fitzpatrick appreciates institutional repositories as an alternative, she also points out the networking limitations here, and she goes on to suggest not-for-profit disciplinary repositories instead. The article ends with a call to researchers to contribute their work to the MLA Commons, a repository hosted by the Modern Language Association (though only available to Modern Language Association members), presenting it as a growing alternative to Academia.edu. Of note, MLA Commons has now evolved into Humanities Commons, which is open to all. Mirghaderi, Leilasadat, Monika Sziron, and Elisabeth Hildt. 2023. "Ethics and Transparency Issues in Digital Platforms: An Overview" AI 4(4): 831-843. https://doi.org/10.3390/ai4040042. This literature review identifies three zones where there is a lack of transparency in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by digital platforms. First, there is non-transparency about who contributes to platforms, such as how many platform workers there are and who counts as a platform worker. Second, there is non-transparency about the contributions and work conditions of platform workers. Third, there is non-transparency on how algorithms for AI are developed, as they are currently proprietary and confidential black boxes that are often biased and susceptible to deception. To address these issues, the authors suggest regulating the status of platform workers, creating ethics codes around platform labour, developing self-regulatory agencies and public policies for platforms, and making training datasets for AI openly available for bias evaluation. Ossewaarde, Marinus, and Wessel Reijers. 2017. “The Illusion of the Digital Commons: ‘False Consciousness’ in Online Alternative Economies.” Organization 24 (5): 609–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508417713217.  Ossewaarde and Reijers examine digital commons—and specifically the hospitality exchange platforms Airbnb, Couchsurfing, and BeWelcome—to challenge the widespread assumption that digital commons premised on sharing function as truly emancipatory spaces set apart from capitalist culture. They claim that, as technologically mediated platforms, digital commons are in fact very susceptible to market pressures, and that there is a disconnect between the seemingly non- or even anti-capitalist practice of “commoning” (open, digital sharing) and the economic pressures that inevitably act on and constrain digital commons themselves. This tension, they argue, can ultimately engender profound cynicism. Invoking sociologist Georg Simmel on the topic of economic exchange and Peter Sloterdijk on cynicism, their discussion focuses on hospitality exchange platforms while gesturing, via media and technology studies criticism, to the relevance of these ideas in discussions of digital commons and practices of digital commons more generally. By way of conclusion, they briefly sketch out two possible solutions to the problems they introduce: vigilant, democratic governance of digital commons, and further self-reflexive examination of the ways technology mediates our lives. Scholz, R. Trebor. 2023. Own This! How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet. London New York: Verso. “Own This!” could be read as a call-to-action, blueprint, and critique of digital platforms and its structurations of labour and life. From the outset of the book, Scholz argues that the labour required to sustain digital platforms is typically provided by migrant workers who receive little pay, protections, or benefits—all while billions of dollars accumulate in the “bank accounts of Silicon Valley executives” (2). Viewing this issue as intertwined with efforts to reclaim public control over the Internet, its apps, and its protocols, Scholz presents ‘platform cooperatives’ as an alternative. Platform cooperatives blend platforms with the principles of cooperatives (namely, shared ownership and democratic decision-making) in order to gain greater control over the provision of labour and secure fairer, safer, and more equitable working conditions. The book has eight chapters, including the introduction and epilogue. The first two chapters focus on making the case for cooperatives, and Scholz makes a concerted effort to highlight real-world examples of cooperatives throughout. They also offer an introduction and review of the principles underpinning cooperatives that may be helpful to those who have only a passing familiarity with the concept of cooperatives. The third and fourth chapter consider issues of scale and definitions of value from the perspective of platform cooperatives. Scholz’s discussion of expanding theories of social good beyond economic indicators to others that include collective and individual well-being, as well as equity and sustainability, may resonate with readers who are interested in discussions regarding scholarly impact and the value of open access research. The fifth chapter considers partnerships, including those between unions and cooperatives, and the sixth chapter focuses on data–data commons, data democracy, and liberating data from private interests. The last chapter presents a vision of a near-future (2035) where cooperatives thrive and cities form alliances. In the epilogue, Scholz addresses the question of how to start a platform cooperative, offering some practical tips and points for further consideration. Srnicek, Nick. 2016. Platform Capitalism. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Srnicek traces the economic history of capitalism and digital technology to explore how platforms behave as economic actors that constantly seek out new markets, commodities, and means of exploitation. The book begins by explaining how the economic crises of the 1970s, 1990s, and 2008 reduced the profitability of manufacturing and gave rise to a new digital economy that demands constant technological change and the undermining of skilled workers to generate profits. In this context, data has become one way to maintain economic growth as the production sector slows. Platforms are the new business model for extracting and controlling ever-increasing amounts of data by providing the infrastructure to intermediate between different user groups. Srnicek categorizes platforms in five (usually overlapping) types: advertising, cloud, industrial, product, and lean platforms. Regardless of their type, platforms have a tendency towards monopolisation through the cross-subsidisation of their services and the enclosure of platforms to prevent the use of alternatives. These tendencies suggest that platform companies are looking to become the owners of the infrastructures of society, rather than being mere owners of information. Van Dijck, José, Thomas Poell, and Martijn de Waal. 2018. “Platform Mechanisms.” In The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World, 31–48. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. This chapter examines three primary mechanisms used by platforms like Facebook, Google, and Uber—datafication, commodification, and selection—to shape activities across different spheres of life. Datafication mechanisms are those that convert various aspects of the world (such as demographics and user interactions) into data. Commodification involves transforming data and user activities into tradable commodities within multi-sided markets. Selection mechanisms enable platforms to curate content and influence user behavior through personalization and reputation metrics. The authors highlight the socio-economic impact of these mechanisms, emphasizing the need to reconsider assumptions that platforms, especially those like Facebook, actively reflect the social relations in our everyday lives when, in effect, they may actually steer and construct these relations. Despite this, the authors conclude that though an examination of these different mechanisms remains critical, equally critical is the understanding that platforms are deeply reliant on users. As such, the impact of collective user behaviour must also be considered, particularly if the outcomes of platformization are to be mitigated or shaped differently. Van Doorn, Niels. 2017. “Platform Labor: On the Gendered and Racialized Exploitation of Low-Income Service Work in the ‘on-Demand’ Economy.” Information, Communication & Society 20 (6): 898–914. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1294194. Van Doorn analyzes the gendered, radicalized, and classed nature of digitally mediated service work, which he describes as platform labour. He argues that inequality is a feature of platform labour because it is embedded in the gendered and racialized subordination and exploitation of low-income service workers. Therefore, labour platforms should be understood as new players in the temporary staffing industry that leverage software to optimize the flexibility, scalability, tractability, and fragmentation of labour. Van Doorn contextualizes these arguments by positioning the on-demand economy as a continuation and intensification of the neoliberal reforms that, since the 1980s, have repressed wages and broken the power of organised labour. Additionally, service work has a gendered and racialized history that has been extended but concealed in the current platform economy. To address these issues, Van Doorn highlights the potential of ethnography to highlight the experiences of service workers while collaborating with them to build support structures that sustain their livelihoods. Another proposed solution is platform cooperativism (platforms owned, governed, and designed by workers), but it would require addressing the racialized and gendered nature of service work, as well as rethinking how the state can be involved in the maintenance and expansion of these cooperatives. Thinking Through Sustainability Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. 2024. “Burns Trust: The Amazon Unsustainabilty Report.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/65681f099d7c3d48feb86a5f/t/6721c4047213ea343e50536f/1730266118471/unsustainability-report-2.pdf. This report, authored by a group of Amazon corporate employees, details several sustainability issues with Amazon and contrasts them with Amazon’s annual sustainability reports. Some key findings are that Amazon’s annual carbon emissions have grown since 2019 despite drastically undercounting its emissions, the company sells custom AI services to fossil fuel companies, its data centres are driving up demand for fossil fuels, and Amazon’s warehouses increase air pollution around communities of colour. These findings show a disconnection between Amazon’s stated goals of reaching net-zero emissions by 2040 and its environmental, labour, and accountability practices. To improve the current conditions at the company, the authors call for Amazon to stop partnering with oil and gas companies, track the carbon emissions of third-party vendors, invest in renewable energy in the same regions where data centres are located, and increase its transparency when reporting shipping, emissions, and electricity usage data. Barats, Christine, Valérie Schafer, and Andreas Fickers. 2020. “Fading Away... The Challenge of Sustainability in Digital Studies.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 14 (3). This paper examines the challenges of sustaining digital data and projects in three stages of research: data collection, data analysis, and knowledge dissemination. Drawing from interviews with French social sciences and humanities scholars, the authors argue that there is a tension between long-term data preservation and the short life cycles of platforms and infrastructures. The challenges found were the diversity of approaches and instability of digital data collection, the lack of time and resources for maintaining research data, the quick obsolescence of digital tools, and the loss of context of the data. The authors conclude that these challenges are not only technical but also related to the institutional contexts and epistemic traditions in which digital studies take place. Drucker, Johanna. 2021. “Sustainability and Complexity: Knowledge and Authority in the Digital Humanities.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 36 (2): ii86–ii94. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab025. For Drucker, sustainability in the digital humanities is not just a technical or logistical problem but a reflection of the deeper relationship between knowledge production, authority, and the cultural frameworks that govern digital scholarship. Drawing on a mixture of anecdotal case studies, Drucker places sustainability within a broader epistemic context, focusing on its entanglement with complexity. Drucker argues for the need to go beyond thinking about sustainability solely in terms of the maintenance of existing projects or systems and instead consider how we can ensure that the knowledge production processes can endure across time and institutional changes, while adapting to technological and cultural shifts. For instance, environmental concerns (e.g., ecological impact and energy consumption), societal concerns (e.g., unethical labour and unsafe working environments), and intellectual concerns (e.g., the longevity of knowledge systems and the preservation of intellectual labour) are all critical when considering sustainability in the digital humanities.Throughout the article, Drucker emphasizes the need for humanistic methods and ethical principles to guide decisions about the future of digital scholarship, highlighting how the cultural authority of knowledge is at stake in discussions of sustainability. Fuster Morell, Mayo, and Ricard Espelt. 2019. "A Framework to Assess the Sustainability of Platform Economy: The Case of Barcelona Ecosystem." Sustainability 11 (22): 6450. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11226450. Fuster Morell and Espelt introduce a framework for evaluating the sustainability of platform economy initiatives and apply it to a sample of 100 commons-based peer-to-peer production projects in Barcelona. Their framework considered five dimensions of democratic sustainability: governance, economic model, technology policies, data policies, and social responsibility and impact. The authors found a strong positive correlation between democratic platform governance and a democratic economic model, as well as between democratic governance and democratic technology and data policies (such as free and open source software and use of Creative Commons licenses). The results indicate that democratic platform governance and transparency are key to improve economic and environmental efficiency. George, Kat. 2019. “The Tech Industry has a Serious Sustainability Problem.” HuckMag.com. https://www.huckmag.com/article/the-tech-industry-has-a-serious-sustainability-problem. George questions why there is a lack of awareness of the environmental issues surrounding the tech industry. The essay highlights that the raw materials required for producing smartphones and computers are mined in developing countries with exploitative labour conditions. Other issues are the energy-intensive production process of hardware and the planned obsolescence of these products to encourage more consumption. Some challenges in raising awareness of these issues are the need for tech products to participate in social life and the oligopoly of the consumer tech market that prevents new entrants from competing with established companies. To increase consumer action around tech, George calls for consumers to reflect on the origins of their devices and to demand better practices from companies. Helfen, Markus. 2021. “#17_ Platforms vs. Sustainability: The Winners Take All and Everything is Lost?” The Labour Inspection Blog_#LIB. https://labour-inspection.net/2021/10/08/17_-platforms-vs-sustainability-the-winners-take-all-and-everything-is-lost/. Helfen explores if platforms (including those beyond the tech industry) are sustainable and whether they can be managed sustainably in economic, social, and ecological terms. Helfen argues that as platforms become more common and attractive in business terms, their business models monopolize external resources, limit the investment in public infrastructure, undermine workers’ rights, and jeopardize ecological survival due to their high energy consumption. In contrast, sustainable platforms would ensure the regeneration of resources, improve labour standards, and make the production of wealth socio-ecologically bearable. However, ensuring sustainability in platforms requires rethinking organizational forms, governance arrangements, and experimentation with alternatives such as cooperatives and associations because current dominating platforms seem to be incompatible with sustainability. Rashidian, Nushin. 2019. “Friend and Foe: The Platform Press at the Heart of Journalism.” Columbia Journalism Review, November 22, 2019. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/the-platform-press-at-the-heart-of-journalism.php/. Rashidian discusses the end of the “platform era” in journalism, brought on in part by the growing realisation of publishers that sustainability over the long-term necessitates a return to valuing and prioritizing relationships with readers. Rashidian also reports that publishers shared how platform companies failed to deliver on their original promises to bring in additional advertising revenue that would make it worthwhile for publishers to forfeit their audience relationships and editorial control. As the “platform era” fades, publishers are now focusing on rebuilding their autonomy, emphasizing their own properties and revenue streams over platform-dependent reach. Findings from the report also emphasize the importance of maintaining control over distribution channels and preserving the integrity of audience relationships, which may resonate with those interested in questions related to how best to support open access and public knowledge commons initiatives without compromising quality or independence. Tucker, Joanna. 2022. “Facing the Challenge of Digital Sustainability as Humanities Researchers.” Journal of the British Academy, 10: 93–120 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/010.093. Tucker argues that one of the fundamental challenges that researchers in the humanities face when discussing sustainability is that understanding of what ‘sustainability of digital resources’ actually means differs significantly depending on who is present during the discussion. As such, Tucker proposes researchers in the humanities consider, as a collective, what sustainability means in practice. Four critical aspects of sustainability in practices are proposed by Tucker for further consideration (technological, financial, environmental, and human). For instance, technological sustainability might involve the long-term management of digital tools and resources, whereas financial sustainability may be concerned with long-term funding and the cost of sustaining ongoing updates. Environmental sustainability, on the other hand, could involve mitigating the demands of sufficient data storage and digital infrastructure, as well as the energy and footprint needed. Lastly, the human aspect of sustainability could comprise the people who create, maintain, and use digital resources, since digital projects depend on the labour, skills, and knowledge of individuals and communities. Finally, Tucker argues humanities researchers must be more actively engaged in conversations regarding sustainability, rather than viewing these conversations as external to the discipline and/or their projects. To this point, Tucker suggests that participating in conversations about sustainability–even those happening in ‘other’ disciplines–be considered a core aspect of digital scholarship in the humanities. Zarra, Antonella, Felice Simonelli, Karolien Lenaerts, Man Luo, Sara Baiocco, Ben Shenglin, Wenwei Li, William Echikson, and Zachary Kilhoffer. 2019. “Sustainability in the Age of Platforms.” SSRN Scholarly Paper 3610672. Rochester, NY. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3610672. This report combines a literature review with in-depth case studies of Alibaba, eBay, LuFax, and Rakuten in order to explore the impacts of the platform economy on environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Several recommendations for improving sustainable practices are presented. These include: standardizing reporting systems on sustainability, pressuring platforms to broaden their definitions of success to include social indicators, increasing expectations and the information provided about the sustainability of a product and the seller, and educating and incentivizing the general public about the importance of purchasing sustainable (rather than cheaper) products. Privacy and Surveillance Adema, Janneke, Gary Hall, Fitzpatrick Kathleen, Aventurier Pascal, and Parry David. 2015. Really, We’re Helping To Build This . . . Business: The Academia.edu Files. Liquid Books. http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/106236504/The%20Academia_edu%20Files. In this compilation of files, 11 authors critique Academia.edu and other dot-com sites that present themselves as open access platforms while taking investments from venture capitalists they will eventually have to pay back. The authors see Academia.edu as an extremely influential company that is poised to collect—and potentially exploit—a tremendous amount of data. They argue that Academia.edu’s efficacy and longevity may ultimately be compromised by its profit-driven model and the kinds of actions that such a model can engender. The authors see sites like Academia.edu as a problematic form of academic social media in which increased user participation builds social capital within a network of competition for recognition, often addressing this function in terms of the Foucauldian “technologies of the self.” Finally, the authors gesture toward theorizing a more economically progressive academic social networking site that does not rely on venture capital investments, heralding the idea of commonly owned, open-source, and economically and socially progressive social media, which seeks to nurture/interact with scholarly research as a commons. Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2015. “Academia, not Edu.” Really, We're Helping To Build This . . . Business: The Academia.edu Files. Liquid Books: Open Humanities Press. http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/106424037/Academia%2C%20Not%20Edu. Fitzpatrick reviews the problems with Academia.edu and the state of possible alternatives in 2015. The problem with Academia.edu, for Fitzpatrick, is that the corporation’s main objective is not to improve scholarly communication but to profit from it. She shares Gary Hall’s criticisms of Academia.edu’s exploitation of academic labour, and they both share a drive to pursue alternative platforms for sharing research in a way that subverts Academia.edu’s business model and competes with the ubiquitousness of Academia.edu’s network. While Fitzpatrick appreciates institutional repositories as an alternative, she also points out the networking limitations here, and she goes on to suggest not-for-profit disciplinary repositories instead. The article ends with a call to researchers to contribute their work to the MLA Commons, a repository hosted by the Modern Language Association (though only available to Modern Language Association members), presenting it as a growing alternative to Academia.edu. Of note, MLA Commons has now evolved into Humanities Commons, which is open to all. Tanczer, Leonie Maria, Ronald J. Deibert, Didier Bigo, M. I. Franklin, Lucas Melgaço, David Lyon, Becky Kazansky, and Stefania Milan. 2020. “Online Surveillance, Censorship, and Encryption in Academia.” International Studies Perspectives 21 (1): 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekz016. This ‘forum’ features five short articles focused on the intersection between data privacy, online surveillance, academic freedom, and exploitative digital platforms. The articles warn against the increase of surveillance and censorship in neoliberal academic spaces through for-profit digital platforms, internet shutdowns, and metrics for research evaluation. One recurring concern was that universities were subcontracting email services, data storage, and reference lists to private companies, undermining public education, academic freedom, and privacy. The final article lists some encryption and privacy suggestions to protect the privacy of research participants and data, such as using free/libre open-source software and contacting research participants through encrypted channels. Zuboff, Shoshana. 2015. “Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization.” Journal of Information Technology 30 (1): 75-89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5. Zuboff proposes the concept of surveillance capitalism to define a new logic of accumulation centered around big data that seeks to predict and modify human behaviour as a means to produce revenue and market control. She contrasts this definition with the ideas of Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, to illuminate the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism. In particular, she challenges Varian’s assumptions of data extraction and analysis, new contractual forms, personalization and customization, and continuous experiments in platforms. These features of computer-mediated transactions extract data without the consent of users, prevent the formation of social trust, and lack transparency and accountability. In this context, Zuboff identifies the emergence of Big Other, a networked institutional regime that records and commodifies everyday experience to establish new pathways to monetization and profit while eliminating the freedom achieved by the rule of law. This regime constitutes the installation of a new kind of sovereign power that undermines democracy and creates new asymmetries of knowledge and power. Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/9781610395694/?lens=publicaffairs. This book introduces the concept of surveillance capitalism as “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales” (9). Zuboff argues that surveillance capitalism cannot be equated to digital technologies or platforms because these technologies are an expression of the capitalist economic interests that put them into action. In this context, a new form of power emerges called instrumentarian power, which shapes human behaviour towards others’ ends through the use of a computational infrastructure that Zuboff calls the Big Other. This form of power seeks to organize society as a human simulation of machine learning systems, in which group pressure and computational certainty replace democracy and undermine free will and the social function of an individualized existence. Surveillance capitalism is different from industrial capitalism because it demands unimpeded freedom and total market knowledge, it lacks reciprocity with societies, consumers, and workers, and it concentrates oversight and control into a small group of surveillance capitalists. Zuboff concludes that surveillance capitalism is a coup from above that threatens democracy as it instills a tyranny that attempts to dominate human nature. However, it can be resisted by naming what is unprecedented of surveillance capitalism and through new forms of collaborative action that assert the right to a human future. Platforms and the Limits of Free Speech Chagas, Viktor. 2024. “Far-Right Memespheres and Platform Affordances: The Effects of Environmental Opacity on the Spread of Extremist Memes on Twitter and WhatsApp.” Journal of Applied Communication Research 52 (4): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2024.2355114. Chagas compares 1,794 digital memes shared on WhatsApp and Twitter about former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro to understand how the structural singularities of platforms influence user practices. The study found that ideological memes with conspiracy elements and misinformation are shared more often on WhatsApp than on Twitter. WhatsApp, as an end-to-end encrypted platform, does not perform content moderation or algorithmic curation, so its structural design favours the development of homophilic audiences and extremist memes. The author concludes that more cross-platform research is needed to identify how different platform uses and affordances enable the dissemination of different types of memes. Conway, Philip R. 2024. “Repressive Suspicion, or: The Problem with Conspiracy Theories.” Cultural Studies 38 (5): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2024.2364260. Conway analyzes how conspiracy theories misdirect their suspicion towards the hidden workings of power. Drawing upon Herbert Marcuse’s ideas, Conway argues that conspiracy theories tend to engage in repressive suspicion, a misdirection of the suspicion towards the crimes and cruelty of power that reproduces oppressive social relations and conceals the systemic causes of the phenomena that originates the conspiracy theories. This concept is illustrated through an analysis of the police interview transcripts of one prominent participant in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and how he became involved with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. Viewing conspiracy theories through the perspective of repressive suspicion avoids romanticising or pathologising them to instead highlight their tendency to advance the cause of domination by fraudulently promising emancipation to their adherents. The article ends with a call to conceive what the opposite of repressive suspicion looks like, as it can be a way of directing attention towards oppressive social relations. Funke, Daniel. 2018. “A Guide to Anti-Misinformation Actions Around the World.” Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/anti-misinformation-actions/. This news article lists initiatives to regulate misinformation in over 50 countries worldwide. While several approaches exist, some of the main ones are legislation, government task forces, media literacy campaigns, and law enforcement. However, some countries have used these measures against misinformation to target journalists, news outlets, or opposition parties, especially in countries with low press freedom. Other measures have included internet shutdowns and government threats. The article closes with an online form to add other initiatives addressing misinformation. Greenspon, Edward, and Taylor Owen. 2018. Democracy Divided: Countering Disinformation and Hate in the Digital Public Sphere. Ottawa: Public Policy Forum. https://ppforum.ca/publications/social-marketing-hate-speech-disinformation-democracy/. This report analyzes the challenges and risks to democracy posed by digital platforms and offers policy options to address them. The authors describe how the Internet has created three waves of negative externalities: cyberattacks, mass surveillance, and disinformation and hate speech. In this context, the responsibilities of digital producers and distributors of information are being rethought, as well as the legal framework of platform companies, given the current lack of public policies regulating them. The report then lists the policy assumptions that guide the recommendations, which include the need to access trustworthy information, the insufficiency of platform self-regulation, and the expectation of transparency and accountability for producers and distributors of civic information. While recognizing that they are not the only options, the report details four categories of policy responses to counter misinformation and hate speech: 1) rebuilding informational trust and integrity; 2) shoring up Canada’s research infrastructure; 3) keeping information markets open, competitive, and clean; and 4) modernizing governance of data rights and opportunities. These regulations can create more certainty for investors and innovators while preventing the erosion of democracy and journalism. Lim, Gabrielle. 2019. "Disinformation Annotated Bibliography." Citizen Lab, University of Toronto. https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Disinformation-Bibliography.pdf. This annotated bibliography focuses on digital disinformation. Sources are organized into nine clusters that span topics such as defining what digital disinformation is (along with its technical and social layers, producers, and pathways), the social and political implications of disinformation, detecting disinformation and measuring its reach, as well as mitigation and intervention efforts. Open access and open social scholarship advocates, along with scholars and practitioners in fields such as the digital humanities may find the bibliography resonates with broader conversations regarding legitimacy, authority, and distribution of scholarly knowledge production. Lim’s bibliography resource serves as a valuable entry point for those interested in examining how disinformation’s reach intersects with broader efforts to build sustainable, user-centered digital knowledge ecosystems. Longhi, Julien. 2021. “Mapping Information and Identifying Disinformation Based on Digital Humanities Methods: From Accuracy to Plasticity.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 36 (4): 980–998. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab005. Longhi explores how digital humanities can contribute to analyzing and interpreting the discourse and meaning in corpora surrounding fake news. The author proposes analyzing fake news as a discursive object, which implies using linguistic markers to identify them. Drawing from a digital discourse analysis of social media posts of the French 2017 presidential election, Longhi illustrates how digital tools can examine the linguistic forms of words, map information, and acknowledge content complexity through data visualizations. This form of analysis goes beyond focusing on the accuracy of information to also take into account how meaning is constructed and how reality might be distorted depending on the referents used to convey news. Mehlenbacher, Ashley Rose, and Brad Mehlenbacher. 2021. “Rogue Rhetorical Actors: Scientists and the Social Action of Tweeting.” In Genre in the Climate Debate, edited by Sune Auken and Christel Sunesen, 179–93. De Gruyter Open Poland. https://doi.org/10.1515/9788395720499-010. In this short chapter, Mehlenbacher and Mehlenbacher share a case study of scientists who use then-Twitter (now ‘X’) to engage in conversations with policy makers, publics, and other scientists about the climate. The authors focus on a particular case, in which several federal U.S. agencies received a gag order, and the resistance and ‘rogue’ actions that ensued. Tweets were analysed through the lens of rhetorical genre theory (or RGT), which re-conceptualizes genre as social, typified ways of responding to recurring rhetorical situations and as artifacts that can tell us more about how a culture perceives and structures itself. Mehlenbacher and Mehlenbacher argue that RGT can support efforts to uncover and examine content shared on platforms such as Twitter can act as precursors to more politicised arguments and actions. However, the authors also note that while the use of platforms to build and share argumentation, they also open up different opportunities for these same efforts to be co-opted and re-used in unintended ways. Nevertheless, Mehlenbacher and Mehlenbacher remain cautiously optimistic. Murphy, Gillian, Constance de Saint Laurent, Megan Reynolds, Omar Aftab, Karen Hegarty, Yuning Sun, and Ciara M. Greene. 2023. “What Do We Study When We Study Misinformation? A Scoping Review of Experimental Research (2016-2022).” Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, November. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-130. Murphy et al. review 555 papers on experimental misinformation research published between 2016 to 2022 to identify trends and gaps in the literature. They found an increase in misinformation studies over time, with the majority focusing on political or health misinformation. However, the authors argue that there is an overrepresentation of samples from the United States and that most studies (78%) examined changes in beliefs and attitudes but not changes in behaviours due to exposure to misinformation. Another limitation in the literature was that 62.7% of the studies presented misinformation to participants in a text format, while video or audio were used in less than 2% of the studies. To better understand the influence of misinformation in attitude and behaviour changes, the authors suggest the use of methods that assess misinformation presented in multiple formats and platforms on repeated occasions over a longer time interval. West, Jevin D., and Carl T. Bergstrom. 2021. “Misinformation in and about Science.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (15): e1912444117. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912444117. West and Bergstrom examine how misinformation occurs within science. They describe issues such as the exaggeration of research results by researchers and science journalists, the publication bias that encourages researchers to only share positive results, the misquotation of other studies, the distortion of scientific data, and the publication in predatory journals. These issues prevent addressing social problems and climate and health crises because they undermine the public’s trust in science. The authors’ recommendations for countering misinformation in science are changing scientists’ incentives around scientific publication for tenure and funding, supporting science journalism, promoting quantitative literacy and critical thinking among higher education students, and developing methods for identifying statistical errors and anomalies. Researching Platforms and Digital Environments Models and Mechanisms of Platform Governance and Regulation