The politics of ‘platforms’

Type Journal Article Author Tarleton Gillespie URL http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/3/347 Volume 12 Issue 3 Pages 347-364 Publication New Media & Society ISSN 1461-4448, 1461-7315 Date 05/01/2010 Journal Abbr New Media Society DOI 10.1177/1461444809342738 Accessed 2015-09-25 20:10:18 Library Catalog nms.sagepub.com Language en Abstract Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged.