The political economy of Facebook’s platformization in the mobile ecosystem
Facebook Messenger as a platform instance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11268366 |
|---|---|
| Authors | D B Nieborg (0000-0002-3498-789X, University of Toronto, corresponding author), Anne Helmond (0000-0003-4327-4012, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 196-218 |
| Publication date | 2019-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Media Culture & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0163443718818384 |
| PMID | 30886448 |
| OpenAlex | W2905102348 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 112 |
| References cited | 36 |
Facebook’s usage has reached a point that the platform’s infrastructural ambitions are to be taken very seriously. To understand the company’s evolution in the age of mobile media, we critically engage with the political economy of platformization. This article puts forward a conceptual framework and methodological apparatus to study Facebook’s economic growth and expanding platform boundaries in the mobile ecosystem through an analysis of the Facebook Messenger app. Through financial and institutional analysis, we examine Messenger’s business dimension and draw on platform studies and information systems research to survey its technical dimension. By retracing how Facebook, through Messenger, operationalizes platform power, this article attempts to bridge the gap between these various disciplines by demonstrating how platforms emerge and how their apps may evolve into platforms of their own, thereby gaining infrastructural properties. It is argued that Messenger functions as a ‘platform instance’ that facilitates transactions with a wide range of institutions within the boundaries of the app and far beyond
Advertising · Biology · Business · Ecosystem · Internet privacy · Mobile apps · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social media · Sociology · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Digital Platforms and Economics · ICT Impact and Policies · Social Media and Politics · Ecology
Theorizing “compute” as the organizing asset of digital capitalism
Reframing platform power
Datafication
Platformisation
Beyond the smart city
DIY Music and the Politics of Social Media
Plataformização
Understanding screenshot collection and sharing on messaging platforms
Social cohesion in platformized public spheres
The rise of corporational determinism
Expanding the debate about content moderation
Platforms, Power & Advertising
What Dead-and-Dying Platforms Do for Internet Studies
Sociality and Monetization on Live Streaming Platforms
Locating and Theorizing Platform Power
Exploring Video-Game Production’s Contingency on Live-Streaming Platforms
Datification of the wisdom of the crowd
Streaming de vídeo, cómo las plataformas condicionan el comportamiento y los usos expresivos de los usuarios de sus apps
Investigating drivers of service extension success for a super app
Modeling Jordanian audience engagement and news credibility in the digital media era
Governing artificial intelligence in the media and communications sector
Platform power in AI
WeChat and the Sharing of News in Networked China
Do Facebook and Google Care about Journalism? Mapping the Relationship between Affordances of GNI and FJP Tools and Journalistic Norms
“Saving Journalism from Facebook’s Death Grip”? The Implications of Content-Recommendation Platforms on Publishers and Their Audiences
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The rise of education rentiers
The material politics of mobile virtual reality
Cynical technical practice
Asignifying Animacies in the Home
Why do users perceive digital platforms as indispensable to their lives
The postcolonial route of WeChat
For a Political Ecology of Communication
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AI competitions as infrastructures of power in medical imaging
Transgressing local, national, global spheres
Co‐Creation, Platformization, and Public Service Effectiveness in a Developing Governance Context
Platform Urbanization for “Local Life”
Compressed Time, Mobile Labour
Super apps as escrow platforms
Intimate platform biographies on, off and underneath Instagram
The Data Journalism Handbook
Civilizing infrastructure
The Metaverse as a virtual form of data-driven smart urbanism
The political economy of family life among Romanian Roma
The four deaths of Couchsurfing and the changing ecology of the web
Facebook’s evolution
The rise and fall of MapQuest
Mobile paradoxes
Theorizing platformization from the perspective of the connection between mobile journalism and political participation
Language as the tip of the iceberg? Shedding a critical light on ‘hidden’ discourse in digital platforms
The intersection of corporate discourse and platform design
The Politics of Platforms/ Pingtai 平台
Datafied mobile markets
Ver a floresta por suas árvores
Digital Comparative Mobilities in Platform Economies
Thinking Inside the Box
Commercialization of Creative Videos in China in the Digital Platform Age
Digital Domestic (Im)material Labor
Optimizing Looking and Buying on Instagram
Being social for whom? Issues of monetization, exploitation, and alienation in mobile social games
Facebook’s platform coloniality
Facebook confessions
Thus spoke Zuckerberg
Oculus imaginaries
The metaverse and how we’ll build it’
Going with the flow
Seeing the forest for the trees
Analyzing institutional platform power
A proxy for privacy uncovering the surveillance ecology of mobile apps
From platform provider to big-data-enabled financier
Undermining competition, undermining markets? Implications of Big Tech and digital personal data for competition policy
Disinformation as Cultural Narrative
Commercializing desire for platform economics
Snapchat’s augmented reality brand culture
TikTok’s tools
The Janus faces of Silicon Valley
Big Tech
Appscapes in everyday life
Plattform-Regulierung. Koordination von Märkten und Kuratierung von Sozialität im Internet
Artificial Intelligence’s Staging
Comparing the platformization of news media systems
Digital platforms as entangled infrastructures
Chinese affective platform economies
The platformization of misogyny
From the main-melody story to gaming experience
Beyond platform capitalism
On super apps and app stores
Infrastructuralization of Tik Tok
Media power in digital Asia
The limits and boundaries of digital disconnection
Reclaiming the human in machine cultures
Buying on Weixin/WeChat
Browsing with Alexa
(Infra)structural Discontinuity
Extraoperable networks
Artificial Intelligence’s Staging
Line as Super App
The Culture of Connectivity
Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms
Balancing platform control and external contribution in third‐party development
The Digital Platform
Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets
Networks, platforms, and strategy
A Review of Facebook Research in the Social Sciences
The Political Economy of Communication
Becoming Digital
Regimes of Sharing
Explorations in Critical Studies of Advertising
Sorting Things Out
Facebook
A brief history of Facebook as a media text
Precorporation
What have we learned about social media by studying Facebook? A decade in review
The like economy
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook
Making the world more open and connected”
Facebook’s mobile career
Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook
The platformization of cultural production
Computing the everyday
You Media’
Could digital platforms capture the media through infrastructure
The politics of 'platforms
Isomorphism through algorithms
Internet profiling
Crushing Candy
The Platformization of the Web
Platform Studies' Epistemic Threshold
| Unique citing works | 112 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 16 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 111 |