Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook

TLDR: This article uses case studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a valuable approach to the evolution of shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often provided or regulated by governments in the public interest.

Abstract: Two theoretical approaches have recently emerged to characterize new digital objects of study in the media landscape: infrastructure studies and platform studies. Despite their separate origins and different features, we demonstrate in this article how the cross-articulation of these two perspectives improves our understanding of current digital media. We use case studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a valuable approach to the evolution of shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often provided or regulated by governments in the public interest. On the other hand, platform studies captures how communication and expression are both enabled and constrained by new digital systems and new media. In these environments, platform-based services acquire characteristics of infrastructure, while both new and existing infrastructures are built or reorganized on the logic of platforms. We conclude by underlining the potential of this combi...

Figures

Table 1. Table summarizing infrastructure and platform properties.

Full text

Jean-Christophe Plantin, Carl Lagoze, Paul N. Edwards
and Christian Sandvig
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies
in the age of Google and Facebook
Article (Accepted version)
(Refereed)
Original citation:
Plantin, Jean-Christophe, Lagoze, Carl, Edwards, Paul N. and Sandvig, Christian (2016)
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media &
Society . ISSN 1461-4448
DOI: 10.1177/1461444816661553
© 2016 Sage
This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67571/
Available in LSE Research Online: September 2016
LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the
School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual
authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any
article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research.
You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities
or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE
Research Online website.
This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. There may be
differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the
publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.

1"
Pre-publication version, August 2016
Plantin JC. Lagoze C., Edwards P., Sandvig C., (2016) “Infrastructure studies meet
platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook,” New Media & Society
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the
age of Google and Facebook
Jean-Christophe Plantin
The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Carl Lagoze, Paul N Edwards and Christian Sandvig
University of Michigan, USA
Abstract
Two theoretical approaches have recently emerged to characterize new digital objects
of study in the media landscape: infrastructure studies and platform studies. Despite
their separate origins and different features, we demonstrate in this article how the
cross-articulation of these two perspectives improves our understanding of current
digital media. We use case studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to
demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a valuable approach to the evolution of
shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often provided or regulated
by governments in the public interest. On the other hand, platform studies captures how
communication and expression are both enabled and constrained by new digital
systems and new media. In these environments, platform-based services acquire
characteristics of infrastructure, while both new and existing infrastructures are built or
reorganized on the logic of platforms. We conclude by underlining the potential of this
combined framework for future case studies.
Keywords
API, applications, Facebook, Google, infrastructures, networks, Open Web, platforms,
programmability, STS

Plantin JC. Lagoze C., Edwards P., Sandvig C., (2016) “Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in
the age of Google and Facebook,” New Media & Society, [pre-print]
2
Until recently, scholars of media have been satisfied with a short list of objects of
study. For researchers interested in conduit and not content, each medium was a
technology and also a surrounding “environment” (Meyrowitz, 1997: 60) of objects,
audiences, producers, distributors, laws, communities, and companies. Every medium
proved capacious and lasting as a category and created its own tradition of inquiry:
radio studies, film studies, telecommunications, television studies, and computer-
mediated communication. The advent of digital technologies and the Internet
challenged this epistemology. Increasingly subdivided media objects seemed to require
an increasingly subdivided media theory. For example, video games were initially
categorized as “interactive television,” but when the characteristics of video games
diverged from those of television, this term became ungainly, and specific research
emerged to target the new media object. Similarly, Tinder, electronic mail (email), and
numerically controlled machine tools all involve “computing,” but it is not obvious that
they should all be analyzed in the same way. Scholars turned to new concepts to
acknowledge the heterogeneity of media.
Two theoretical approaches have emerged as potential candidates to contain and
characterize the new digital objects of study in the media landscape: infrastructure
studies, emerging from science and technology studies and information science, and
platform studies, centered in media studies. The former has focused on analyzing
essential, widely shared sociotechnical systems. Using case studies ranging from
electric power grids (Hughes, 1983) to communication networks (Graham and Marvin,
2001) to scientific “cyberinfrastructures” (Edwards et al., 2007), this school of thought
has highlighted key features of infrastructure such as ubiquity, reliability, invisibility,
gateways, and breakdown. By contrast, platform studies explores how computing
devices (such as Intel-chip-based PCs) and software environments (such as gaming
systems) affect the characteristics of application software built upon them. In media
studies, the concept of “platform” has been extended from game design (Montfort and
Bogost, 2009) to content-sharing websites (Gillespie, 2010; Helmond, 2015) and social
media applications (Langlois and Elmer, 2013; van Dijck, 2013). Key features
discussed in platform studies include programmability, affordances and constraints,
connection of heterogeneous actors, and accessibility of data and logic through
application programming interfaces (APIs).

Plantin JC. Lagoze C., Edwards P., Sandvig C., (2016) “Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in
the age of Google and Facebook,” New Media & Society, [pre-print]
3
Both infrastructure and platform refer to structures that underlie or support
something more salient. Yet their different conceptual frameworks and separate origins
obscure the relationship between them. Are the infrastructure and platform perspectives
complementary, opposed, or completely unrelated? Or do they overlap, revealing
different aspects or elements of the same set of objects? Do they describe different
stages on a timeline in which some platforms evolve into infrastructures, or do they
oscillate over time in some pendular cycle?
Consider Google, which we analyze in greater depth below. Google exemplifies
features found in both literatures. Apps such as Google Maps can be considered
programmable platforms on which users and developers can build new digital objects.
At the same time, Google’s web search has become so ubiquitous and deeply
embedded that it could be seen as an infrastructure: robust, widely shared, widely
accessible, and essential. Any breakdown in Google’s services would substantially
disrupt daily life and work. What is Google, then: a platform? An infrastructure? Is it
sequentially or simultaneously both?
Here, we demonstrate that cross-articulating these two perspectives can improve our
understanding of digital media. After reviewing both literatures, we show that
boundaries between the two perspectives have become increasingly blurry. Digital
technologies have made possible a “platformization” of infrastructure and an
“infrastructuralization” of platforms. Articulating the two perspectives highlights the
tensions arising when media environments increasingly essential to our daily lives
(infrastructures) are dominated by corporate entities (platforms). Next using case
studies of Facebook and Google, we demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a
valuable comparative approach to widely accessible services of broad public value, a
perspective not provided by platform studies. At the same time, platform studies, with
its focus on rapidly evolving digital artifacts, shows how expression, communication,
and knowledge are constrained within profit-driven corporate ecosystems. We
conclude by underlining the potential of this combined framework for future research.
Digital environments in infrastructure and platform studies
Infrastructure studies: from systems to networks to webs

Plantin JC. Lagoze C., Edwards P., Sandvig C., (2016) “Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in
the age of Google and Facebook,” New Media & Society, [pre-print]
4
Infrastructure studies developed along two main intellectual lines. The first sought a
historical perspective on large technical systems (LTS). Historians and sociologists
used that perspective to analyze systems ranging from electric power grids to telephone
networks to air traffic control (Bijker et al., 1987; Hughes, 1983; Mayntz and Hughes,
1988). In this perspective, infrastructures often originate as sociotechnical systems that
are centrally designed and controlled, typically in the invention and development
phases of new technologies. In these phases, they remain the province of their
developer(s), whether a single individual, a team, or an enterprise. Once these systems
begin to travel in physical and social space, they also begin to change. Both users and
other developers may modify or extend them while competing technologies and
enterprises arise; consider the many similar, but incompatible devices and standards
developed during the early days of railroads, electric power, or digital computers.
Consequently, when a need arises to link heterogeneous systems into networks,
devices, and/or social apparatuses known as gateways—for example, AC/DC power
converters, software/hardware combinations such as Ethernet, and legal arrangements
such as international trade law (Egyedi, 1996; Egyedi and Spirco, 2011)—must be
created. The network phase signals not only the involvement of many more actors but
also growing social commitments manifested in, for example, explicit standards, user
habituation, and organizational routines. Some infrastructures, such as electric utilities
or postal services, acquire the character of public goods, with governments or highly
regulated monopoly firms taking responsibility for development, operations, and/or
maintenance.
In later phases of development, webs or internetworks (networks of heterogeneous
networks) may form. For example, trucking, rail, and shipping networks developed
independently, but were later integrated into a global internetwork by means of the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard shipping container, a
classic example of a gateway (Busch, 2011; Egyedi, 2001; Klose, 2015). The Internet
itself is a network of heterogeneous computer networks, made possible by the
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Because they integrate
many semi-independent systems, internetworks can only rarely be designed, controlled,
or standardized from above (Edwards et al., 2007); instead, fully developed
infrastructures are complex ecologies whose components must continually adapt to

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

Despite their separate origins and different features, the authors demonstrate in this article how the cross-articulation of these two perspectives improves their understanding of current digital media. The authors use case studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a valuable approach to the evolution of shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often provided or regulated by governments in the public interest. The authors conclude by underlining the potential of this combined framework for future case studies. 

Q2. What are the key features discussed in platform studies?

Key features discussed in platform studies include programmability, affordances and constraints, connection of heterogeneous actors, and accessibility of data and logic through application programming interfaces (APIs). 

Q3. What was the role of the government in the modern infrastructural ideal?

The government’s role was no longer to run or oversee monopoly providers of public goods, but rather the reverse: to break those monopolies apart so as to increase competition while renouncing many of the responsibilities implied by the modern infrastructural ideal. 

Q4. What is the commonplace example of a news aggregator?

A commonplace example are news aggregators, which collect content from numerous sites using the Rich Site Summary (RSS) open standard. 

Q5. What is the purpose of the API?

The API, as a gateway, transforms Facebook from a centrally controlled system into something more like a network of independently developed, yet seamlessly interconnected systems and services. 

Q6. Why are fully developed infrastructures so complex?

Because they integrate many semi-independent systems, internetworks can only rarely be designed, controlled, or standardized from above (Edwards et al., 2007); instead, fully developed infrastructures are complex ecologies whose components must continually adapt toPlantin JC. 

Q7. What are the two recent studies of platforms?

Precursors to platform studies include Benkler’s (2006) investigation of peer production in the “networked public sphere” and Jenkins’ (2006) study of how digital remixing practices alter the traditional boundary between producers and consumers of cultural content. 

Q8. What is the complete realization of the computer utility model?

The French Minitel system, introduced in 1980 and reaching 6.5 million French citizens by 1990 (far more than any commercial networking service), represents perhaps the most complete realization of the computer utility model as a public good (Cats-Baril and Jelassi, 1994). 

Q9. What are the two approaches to analyzing the new digital objects of study?

Two theoretical approaches have emerged as potential candidates to contain and characterize the new digital objects of study in the media landscape: infrastructure studies, emerging from science and technology studies and information science, and platform studies, centered in media studies. 

Q10. What are the three kinds of things that can be done with open standards?

These Open Web protocols can be leveraged to do three kinds of things:• Publish content using open standards and refer to it using open identifiers(URIs);• 

Q11. What was the NSF’s plan to force the provision of Internet connections?

In the 1980s, the NSF forced the broad provision of Internet connections in order to permit scientists at less well-resourced institutions to share time on the costly supercomputers it purchased for a few major research centers—exactly the “computer utility” model. 

Q12. What was the first time the Open Web competed with private online dial-up services?

In its first decade, the Open Web competed directly with private online dial-up services established in the 1980s, such as CompuServe, Prodigy, and American Online. 

Q13. What is the main reason why Google is so dominant?

For good or ill, Google’s near-monopoly on search creates a uniform, invisible, and robust infrastructure for accessing the vast store of knowledge and information on the Open Web.