番茄社区

Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin

This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Data, Networks and Society, MSc in Media and Communications, MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society), MSc in Media and Communications (Media and Communications Governance), MSc in Media and Communications (Research) and MSc in Strategic Communications and Society. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is 'controlled access', meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted. If the course is oversubscribed, offers will be made via a random ballot process, with priority given to students with the course listed on their Programme Regulations. Whilst we do our best to accommodate all requests, we cannot guarantee you a place on this course.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students should apply via 番茄社区 for You without submitting a statement.

Please do not email the teacher with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place.

While US-based Tech giants (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) are still studied as digital platforms, they now constitute major operators of the internet networking infrastructure, as witnessed by their involvement since early 2010s in four sectors: data centers, undersea cables, telecommunications networks, and cell tower. This course will study this radical extension of platform power over the internet architecture, uses, and governance. It will demonstrate that tech giants become dominant actors in these four infrastructural sectors by using the platform strategy that granted them their initial success, and by adapting it from the web economy to infrastructure management.

The course presents key readings in media & communications and sciences & technology studies to analyse contemporary instances of digital media platforms. Students will explore the multiple facets of the increasing power of internet companies by critically analysing how they replace, conflict with, or influence existing infrastructures, and what are the social, political and epistemological consequences of these tensions. This focus on the relations between existing and emerging media configurations will invite students to investigate how platforms constitute ubiquitous media in everyday life, and how they in