Thomas Poell is Professor of Data, Culture & Institutions at the University of Amsterdam. He is program director MA Media Studies, co-founder of the Research Priority Area on Global Digital Cultures, and faculty lead for the national Human(e) AI & the Datafied Society sector plan. Leveraging social media data and digital methods, Poell has studied how digital platforms are reshaping the mobilization, organization, and communication of protest around the globe. In recent years, he has built a conceptual framework to analyze how platforms and AI are reshaping the cultural industries.
Together with Olav Velthuis, he is leading an NWO-funded project on The platformization of the global sex industry. And with Zhen Ye, Smith Metha, Lorena Caminhas, Arturo Arriagada, Godwin Simon, and David Nieborg, he is developing a research project on AI and Creative Work, which connects platform studies with ideas from postcolonial and decolonial theory in a Global Perspectives program. Finally, with Nieborg and José van Dijck, he is currently writing a book on Platform Power.
Poell is co-author of Platforms and Cultural Production (Polity, 2022) and The Platform Society (Oxford University Press, 2018). Furthermore, he co-edited The Sage Handbook of Social Media (Sage, 2018), Social Media Materialities and Protest (Routledge, 2018), and Global Cultures of Contestation (Palgrave/McMillan, 2017).
He has published 40+ articles in international peer-reviewed journals, including New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Social Media + Society, Digital Journalism, Journalism Studies, Internet Policy Review, Chinese Journal of Communication, The Information Society, Social Movement Studies, Communication Theory, Big Data & Society, Television and New Media, and The International Journal of Communication. Finally, he is member of the editorial board of Social Media + Society, Digital Journalism, Platforms & Society, Journal of Digital Social Research, and Communication and the Public.
In this special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Studies, we aim to: 1) challenge universalism, 2) provincialize the US, and 3) multiply our frames of reference in Platform Studies. Pursuing these objectives, we bring together ideas from postcolonial and decolonial theory and platform studies in a systematic research program. This Global Perspectives program allows us to: denaturalize and rethink dominant concepts and ideas through research from around the globe; explicitly thematize and examine the global power relations that structure platform economies; and critically interrogate the knowledge production about these economies. You can find this program in the opening essay.
I have edited this special issue with Brooke Erin Duffy, David Nieborg, Bruce Mutsvairo, Tommy Tse, Arturo Arriagada, Jeroen de Kloet, and Ping Sun. The 20 articles have been organized in the four following sections:
1. Marc Steinberg, Rahul Mukherjee, and Lin Zhang complicate our thinking about platform capitalism– or as the authors emphasize ‘platform capitalisms’: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13678779231223544
2. Robert Prey and Lee Seonok demonstrate that there are ‘structurally distinct models of platformization’: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241244399
3. Dasol Kim examines ‘Team Azimkiya’, a Bangladeshi YouTube channel, that primarily targets South Korean viewers: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13678779241240780
4. Allen Munoriyarwa, Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos and colleagues, enrich our understanding of so-called ‘philanthrocapitalism’: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241265734
5. Zhen Ye and colleagues propose the notion of ‘playful governance’: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241247065
6. Ergin Bulut highlights the importance of the state in regulating and shaping creative imaginaries and labor practices on platforms: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13678779241254541
7. Lorena Caminhas, drawing on 15 interviews with cisgendered female cammers in Brazil, criticizes the traditional understanding of platform-based cultural work as precarious: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241244410
8. Tuğçe Bidav calls for greater attention to the localized dimensions of creator insecurity: from language and governance regimes to staggeringly different CPM rates: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241258491
9. Tinca Lukan examining the agency of influencers in Slovenia: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241268208?icid=int.sj-full-text.citing-articles.3
10. Arturo Arriagada and David Craig examine Latin American influencers in the United States: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13678779241268138
11. Srikanth Nayaka and colleagues investigate the appropriation of social media for creative work in the rural hinterlands of South India: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241292639
12. Alessandro Gandini and colleagues analyze neo-craft work: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13678779241253624
13. Issaaf Karhawi and Rafael Grohmann do a close analysis of the discourse of three Brazilian, Marxist cultural producers —’one woman and two drag queens’— on YouTube, Instagram, and X: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13678779241268078
14. Alex Chartrand and Stefanie Duguay examine how concerns about shadowbanning and algorithmic bias among LGBTQ+Instagrammers in Montreal and Berlin impact their content and communication practices: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241267292?icid=int.sj-abstract.citing-articles.6
15. Gbenga Adeoba and James Yéku examining the relationship between commercial US-based social media platforms and citizenship practices in Nigeria: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241252997
16. Tommy Tse, Lin Zhang, and van @Nanne van Noord explore China’s cultural and economic influence in Kenya through two Chinese-invested e-commerce platforms: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241292077
17. Katerina Girginova highlights the limitations of English-language research on the metaverse, which often takes Horizon Worlds, Meta’s US-centric metaverse prototype, as its starting point: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13678779231224799
18. Jean Burgess and colleagues expand the conceptual conversation about novel technologies, focusing on the notion of diversity, they look for inspiration across disciplines: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13678779241239342
19. Elaine Yuan critically engages with the epistemological limits of Anglo-American celebrity/creator studies research, which primarily focuses on the issues of labor, precarity, and creator agency: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241230564
20. Ignacio Siles and colleagues examine the research on platforms and algorithms in Latin America, focusing on research published in Portuguese or Spanish: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241256376