David Nieborg
Biographic Data
| ID | 8559988 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Nieborg |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Nieborg |
| SIGNATURE | NIEBORG D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A perspective from Nollywood: Examining how GenAI is integrated in the Nigerian film industry
The Power of Inevitability: How OpenAI Configures the Future
This paper investigates the discursive strategies employed by OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, to position themselves as leading the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Through an examination of 44 texts, including OpenAI's corporate communications, media appearances, and journalistic coverage, this study reveals how OpenAI utilizes socio-political anxieties and Silicon Valley ideals to shape a discourse of inevitability about A…
Mainstreaming Decolonial Perspectives in Media and Communication
Over the past two decades, there have been many calls and efforts to decolonize and de-westernize research in media and communication (Aouragh & Chakravartty 2016; Couldry & Mejias 2019; Ricaurte 2019). While these efforts have generated valuable academic centers, community-driven projects, and South-to-South networks (e.g., CARGC, FemLab, Tierra Comun), the field is still dominated by (implicit) universalist perspectives. Often the Anglo-America…
Global Perspectives on Platforms and Cultural Production
While digital platforms have reconfigured the institutions and practices of cultural production around the globe, current research is dominated by studies that take as their reference point the Anglo-American world--and, to a lesser extent--China (Cunningham & Craig 2019; Kaye et al. 2021; Poell et al. 2021; Zhao 2019). Aside from totalizing theories of platform imperialism (Jin, 2013), the “rest of the world” has thus received relatively scant a…
Where My Ai Apps At? A Historiographic Approach to Analyzing Platform Tools
The popular short-form video app TikTok is mainly discussed as a discrete app or in relation to its parent company ByteDance. This view neglects how TikTok and other ByteDance apps maintain and advance ByteDance’s highly complex app ecosystem. This paper, therefore, positions ByteDance-owned apps as both apps and “platform tools.” TikTok allows end-users to watch videos, allows creators to make and distribute content, advertisers to endorse produ…
Reciprocal Platform Labour in the Nigerian Social Media Video Industry
This paper explores how content creators in the Nigerian social media video industry navigate the economic, infrastructural, and cultural logics of digital platforms through practices of reciprocal labour. As is the case in many global contexts, the economic formalization of social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok, have enabled the emergence of for-profit social media video production in Nigeria. This paper focuses on the un…
Contrasting the Pragmatics of Spanishes
This special issue explores contrastive pragmatics with a focus on Spanish in comparison with other languages and varieties. The collection assembles studies comparing Spanish with Chinese, Greek, English, French, and Italian, as well as investigations of pragmatic variation across different varieties of Spanish. The contributions examine a diverse range of pragmatic phenomena, including humour, impoliteness, aggression, mitigation, requests, com…
Introduction to the special issue on Locating and theorising platform power
Against the backdrop of ongoing public and political debates about the power and regulation of large platform conglomerates, this special issue presents critical, conceptual, and empirical studies that home in on the various modalities of platform power
Platforms, Power & Advertising: Analysing Relations of Dependency in the Digital Advertising Ecosystem
This paper examines how dominant institutional actors exercise power and control over the digital advertising ecosystem. It pursues this inquiry through a case study on the 2021 introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature—a privacy setting newly integrated in the operating system of iOS mobile devices. Developing this case study, we ask: How do dominant market actors exercise control over the infrastructural layers of the ‘mob…
The Politics and Evolution of Tiktok as Platform Tool
A fast-growing international success, ByteDance’s short video platform TikTok is a relevant case study to examine how digital platforms expand infrastructurally and accumulate power. TikTok has achieved popularity comparable to major players, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. It now grapples with balancing the diverse interests of its different user groups, chief among which content creators. We interrogate how TikTok manages this chal…
Locating and Theorizing Platform Power
This panel locates and theorizes platform power through five case studies, focussing on: 1) video sharing platforms, 2) app stores, 3) programmatic advertising networks, 4) labor staffing intermediaries, and 5) cloud computing. Each case study starts with the question: where do relations of dependence take shape on the examined platform(s) and how are these relations organized? Addressing this question, the panelists hypothesize that platform pow…
Analyzing Chinese Platform Power: Infrastructure, Finance, and Geopolitics
Spinning is winning: Social casino apps and the platformization of gamble-play
Social casino apps are an emergent genre in the app economy that sits at the intersection of three different industries: casino gambling, freemium mobile games, and social media platforms. This institutional position has implications for the social casino app’s political economy and culture of consumption. We argue that social casino apps are representative of a broader casualization of risk that has taken hold in a platform society. By combining…
Platform Power & Public Value
This paper offers an analytical framework to critically examine the power relations that structure the online platform ecosystem. Following a relational understanding of power, it focuses on the connections between the five leading platform corporations - Alphabet-Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) - and the many other digital properties (i.e. platforms, websites, and apps) that populate the online ecosystem. Exploring these c…
Games of Empire Ten Years On
The panel will retrospectively evaluate the significance of the seminal text Games of Empire (2009) for new media and game studies, reflecting on the contribution of autonomous Marxism to the study of digital culture today, as well as the methodological move it performed in tracing continuities and discontinuities between sites of production and play. Each paper will take one or two key concepts from the original book, including Empire, multitude…
App Imperialism: The Political Economy of the Canadian App Store
In this paper, we introduce the notion of app imperialism by exploring the political economy of the Canadian iOS App Store. Building on Dal Yong Jin's concept of "platform imperialism", we argue that US companies dominate global app stores through the systematic acquisition of capital resources. App imperialism marks the outsized economic footprint and influence of US companies in national app stores. Using a longitudinal financial dataset, we qu…
Plataformização
Este artigo contextualiza, define e operacionaliza o conceito de plataformização. A partir de insights vindos de diferentes perspectivas acadêmicas sobre plataformas – estudos de software, economia política crítica, estudos de negócios e estudos culturais – desenvolvemos uma abordagem compreensiva em relação a esse processo. A plataformização é definida como a penetração de infraestruturas, processos econômicos e estruturas governamentais das pla…
Reframing platform power
This article addresses the problem of platform power by probing current regulatory frameworks' basic assumptions about how tech firms operate in digital ecosystems. Platform power is generally assessed in terms of economic markets in which individual corporate actors harness technological innovations to compete fairly, thereby maximising consumer welfare. We propose three paradigmatic shifts in the conceptualisation of platform power. First, we s…
Platformisation
What is platformisation? This article contextualises, defines, and operationalises the concept. Drawing insights from different scholarly perspectives on platforms it develops a comprehensive approach to this process.
Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions
Mainstreaming Misogyny: The Beginning of the End and the End of the Beginning in Gamergate Coverage
Wikinomics and its discontents: A critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos
Collaborative culture', 'mass creativity' and 'co-creation' appear to be contagious buzzwords that are rapidly infecting economic and cultural discourse on Web 2.0. Allegedly, peer production models will replace opaque, top-down business models, yielding to transparent, democratic structures where power is in the shared hands of responsible companies and skilled, qualified users. Manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) and 'We…
Wikinomics and its discontents: A critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos
Collaborative culture', 'mass creativity' and 'co-creation' appear to be contagious buzzwords that are rapidly infecting economic and cultural discourse on Web 2.0. Allegedly, peer production models will replace opaque, top-down business models, yielding to transparent, democratic structures where power is in the shared hands of responsible companies and skilled, qualified users. Manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) and 'We…
Spinning is winning: Social casino apps and the platformization of gamble-play
Social casino apps are an emergent genre in the app economy that sits at the intersection of three different industries: casino gambling, freemium mobile games, and social media platforms. This institutional position has implications for the social casino app’s political economy and culture of consumption. We argue that social casino apps are representative of a broader casualization of risk that has taken hold in a platform society. By combining…
Wikinomics and its discontents: A critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos
Collaborative culture', 'mass creativity' and 'co-creation' appear to be contagious buzzwords that are rapidly infecting economic and cultural discourse on Web 2.0. Allegedly, peer production models will replace opaque, top-down business models, yielding to transparent, democratic structures where power is in the shared hands of responsible companies and skilled, qualified users. Manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) and 'We…
Mainstreaming Misogyny: The Beginning of the End and the End of the Beginning in Gamergate Coverage
Reframing platform power
This article addresses the problem of platform power by probing current regulatory frameworks' basic assumptions about how tech firms operate in digital ecosystems. Platform power is generally assessed in terms of economic markets in which individual corporate actors harness technological innovations to compete fairly, thereby maximising consumer welfare. We propose three paradigmatic shifts in the conceptualisation of platform power. First, we s…
Platformisation
What is platformisation? This article contextualises, defines, and operationalises the concept. Drawing insights from different scholarly perspectives on platforms it develops a comprehensive approach to this process.
Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions
Platform Power & Public Value
This paper offers an analytical framework to critically examine the power relations that structure the online platform ecosystem. Following a relational understanding of power, it focuses on the connections between the five leading platform corporations - Alphabet-Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) - and the many other digital properties (i.e. platforms, websites, and apps) that populate the online ecosystem. Exploring these c…
Games of Empire Ten Years On
The panel will retrospectively evaluate the significance of the seminal text Games of Empire (2009) for new media and game studies, reflecting on the contribution of autonomous Marxism to the study of digital culture today, as well as the methodological move it performed in tracing continuities and discontinuities between sites of production and play. Each paper will take one or two key concepts from the original book, including Empire, multitude…
App Imperialism: The Political Economy of the Canadian App Store
In this paper, we introduce the notion of app imperialism by exploring the political economy of the Canadian iOS App Store. Building on Dal Yong Jin's concept of "platform imperialism", we argue that US companies dominate global app stores through the systematic acquisition of capital resources. App imperialism marks the outsized economic footprint and influence of US companies in national app stores. Using a longitudinal financial dataset, we qu…
Plataformização
Este artigo contextualiza, define e operacionaliza o conceito de plataformização. A partir de insights vindos de diferentes perspectivas acadêmicas sobre plataformas – estudos de software, economia política crítica, estudos de negócios e estudos culturais – desenvolvemos uma abordagem compreensiva em relação a esse processo. A plataformização é definida como a penetração de infraestruturas, processos econômicos e estruturas governamentais das pla…
Spinning is winning: Social casino apps and the platformization of gamble-play
Social casino apps are an emergent genre in the app economy that sits at the intersection of three different industries: casino gambling, freemium mobile games, and social media platforms. This institutional position has implications for the social casino app’s political economy and culture of consumption. We argue that social casino apps are representative of a broader casualization of risk that has taken hold in a platform society. By combining…
Analyzing Chinese Platform Power: Infrastructure, Finance, and Geopolitics
Platforms, Power & Advertising: Analysing Relations of Dependency in the Digital Advertising Ecosystem
This paper examines how dominant institutional actors exercise power and control over the digital advertising ecosystem. It pursues this inquiry through a case study on the 2021 introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature—a privacy setting newly integrated in the operating system of iOS mobile devices. Developing this case study, we ask: How do dominant market actors exercise control over the infrastructural layers of the ‘mob…
The Politics and Evolution of Tiktok as Platform Tool
A fast-growing international success, ByteDance’s short video platform TikTok is a relevant case study to examine how digital platforms expand infrastructurally and accumulate power. TikTok has achieved popularity comparable to major players, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. It now grapples with balancing the diverse interests of its different user groups, chief among which content creators. We interrogate how TikTok manages this chal…
Locating and Theorizing Platform Power
This panel locates and theorizes platform power through five case studies, focussing on: 1) video sharing platforms, 2) app stores, 3) programmatic advertising networks, 4) labor staffing intermediaries, and 5) cloud computing. Each case study starts with the question: where do relations of dependence take shape on the examined platform(s) and how are these relations organized? Addressing this question, the panelists hypothesize that platform pow…
Introduction to the special issue on Locating and theorising platform power
Against the backdrop of ongoing public and political debates about the power and regulation of large platform conglomerates, this special issue presents critical, conceptual, and empirical studies that home in on the various modalities of platform power
Global Perspectives on Platforms and Cultural Production
While digital platforms have reconfigured the institutions and practices of cultural production around the globe, current research is dominated by studies that take as their reference point the Anglo-American world--and, to a lesser extent--China (Cunningham & Craig 2019; Kaye et al. 2021; Poell et al. 2021; Zhao 2019). Aside from totalizing theories of platform imperialism (Jin, 2013), the “rest of the world” has thus received relatively scant a…
Where My Ai Apps At? A Historiographic Approach to Analyzing Platform Tools
The popular short-form video app TikTok is mainly discussed as a discrete app or in relation to its parent company ByteDance. This view neglects how TikTok and other ByteDance apps maintain and advance ByteDance’s highly complex app ecosystem. This paper, therefore, positions ByteDance-owned apps as both apps and “platform tools.” TikTok allows end-users to watch videos, allows creators to make and distribute content, advertisers to endorse produ…
Reciprocal Platform Labour in the Nigerian Social Media Video Industry
This paper explores how content creators in the Nigerian social media video industry navigate the economic, infrastructural, and cultural logics of digital platforms through practices of reciprocal labour. As is the case in many global contexts, the economic formalization of social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok, have enabled the emergence of for-profit social media video production in Nigeria. This paper focuses on the un…
Contrasting the Pragmatics of Spanishes
This special issue explores contrastive pragmatics with a focus on Spanish in comparison with other languages and varieties. The collection assembles studies comparing Spanish with Chinese, Greek, English, French, and Italian, as well as investigations of pragmatic variation across different varieties of Spanish. The contributions examine a diverse range of pragmatic phenomena, including humour, impoliteness, aggression, mitigation, requests, com…
A perspective from Nollywood: Examining how GenAI is integrated in the Nigerian film industry
The Power of Inevitability: How OpenAI Configures the Future
This paper investigates the discursive strategies employed by OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, to position themselves as leading the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Through an examination of 44 texts, including OpenAI's corporate communications, media appearances, and journalistic coverage, this study reveals how OpenAI utilizes socio-political anxieties and Silicon Valley ideals to shape a discourse of inevitability about A…
Mainstreaming Decolonial Perspectives in Media and Communication
Over the past two decades, there have been many calls and efforts to decolonize and de-westernize research in media and communication (Aouragh & Chakravartty 2016; Couldry & Mejias 2019; Ricaurte 2019). While these efforts have generated valuable academic centers, community-driven projects, and South-to-South networks (e.g., CARGC, FemLab, Tierra Comun), the field is still dominated by (implicit) universalist perspectives. Often the Anglo-America…
Computer Science (14 works) · Business (9 works) · Political science (7 works) · Digital Platforms and Economics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · World Wide Web (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Advertising (4 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (4 works)