How partners mediate platform power: Mapping business and data partnerships in the social media ecosystem
van der Vlist, Fernando; Helmond, Anne
(2021) Big Data & Society, volume 8, issue 1, pp.
(Article)
Abstract
Social media platforms’ digital advertising revenues depend considerably on partnerships. Business partnerships are endemic and essential to the business of platforms, yet their role remains relatively underexplored in the literature on platformisation and platform power. This article considers the significance of partnerships in the social media ecosystem to better understand
... read more
how industry platforms, and the infrastructure they build, mediate and shape platform power and governance. We argue that partners contribute to ‘platformisation’ through their collective development of business-to-business platform infrastructures. Specifically, we examine how partners have integrated social media platforms with what we call the audience economy – an exceptionally complex global and interconnected marketplace of intermediaries involved in the creation, commodification, analysis, and circulation of data audiences for purposes including but not limited to digital advertising and marketing. We determined which relationships are involved, which are exclusive or shared, and identified key ecosystem partners. Further, we found that partners build and integrate extensive infrastructures for data-sourcing and media distribution, surfacing infrastructural and strategic sources and locations, or ‘nodes’, of power in this ecosystem. The empirical findings thus highlight the significance of partnerships and partner integrations and draw attention to the powerful industry players and intermediaries that remain largely invisible.
show less
Download/Full Text
Keywords: Social media platforms, audience economy, data intermediaries, partner integrations, partnerships, platform power, platformisation, Information Systems, Communication, Computer Science Applications, Information Systems and Management, Library and Information Sciences
ISSN: 2053-9517
Publisher: SAGE
Note: Funding Information: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), project number 262513311 (SFB 1187: ‘Media of Cooperation’) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO), grant number 275-45-009. Funding Information: Both authors contributed equally to this work. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 4th Internet, Politics, and Policy conference on ?The Platform Society? (Oxford, 2016), the LSE Media Policy Project workshop on Consolidation of Platform Power (London, 2017), the Data Publics Conference (Lancaster, 2017), The Tracked Society workshop (Amsterdam, 2018), and the 5th SMART Data Sprint on ?The current state of platformisation? (Lisbon, 2021). The authors express appreciation to Jos? van Dijck, Carolin Gerlitz, and the editor and reviewers, whose constructive feedback greatly improved the article. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), project number 262513311 (SFB 1187: ?Media of Cooperation?) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO), grant number 275-45-009. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.
(Peer reviewed)