href

In their introduction to a special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Studies, Thomas Poell, Brooke Erin Duffy, David Nieborg, Bruce Mutsvairo, Tommy Tse, Arturo Arriagada, Jeroen de Kloet and Ping Sun reflect on Western universalism and U.S.-centrism in platform studies and how they can be challenged:

Central concepts in the field … bear a strong imprint of Western institutions, cultural practices, and ideals. Research on the US, in particular, has informed how we approach and subsequently theorize the institutional dimensions (e.g., platform economies, infrastructures, and governance), as well as the cultural practices (e.g., labor, creativity, democracy) of platform-based cultural production. However, as the contributions to this special issue demonstrate, we cannot simply apply these concepts to cultures of production around the globe. There is bound to be friction between how, for example, platform economies and labor markets are understood from a US perspective and the lived experiences of social media creators in Brazil, Nigeria, or India.