IACSS (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society) 2021, From platforms in cities to the platforming of cities
This panel attempts to integrate ideas on the platform in media studies and urban geography and build a constructive flow between them. Initial studies on the platforms have inspired critical reflections on different subjects, from platform capitalism, platform society, to platform urbanism. For Barns (2019), an epistemological development of platform pivot is to be traced back to the architecture of platform infrastructure design for the encounter of multiple markets, decentralization and re-centralization of data (Helmond, 2015), and premised upon it, the commodification of data (Srnicek, 2017). Platformsthus intermediate producers, consumers, and frequently prosumers, exploiting their labor and network sociality for an ever-expanding participatory community, or the crowd-based economy (Sundararajan,2016). Moving far beyond media studies, the value of platform studies is about how a new norm has been distilled from digital platforms and institutionalised as a new rule that governs our consensus on "what is economy, what is society, and what is a city" — in sum, the platformization of everything (Barns, 2020; Rancière, 2013).
Please send your abstract to June Wang(June.wang@cityu.edu.hk