Raiding the inarticulate since 2010

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How the concept of platform shaped my research

Notes for a brief talk I’m doing later, in case anyone is interested

In the early 2010s, helping academics use social media became a big part of my work. For example, I ran a funded academic podcasting project, a large sociology blog, and was an editor of one of the LSE blogs in their public policy group. I became an enthusiast for Twitter, rapidly wanting to persuade academics to use it because I felt it could build a more interesting and supportive research culture. As I was unfunded, this parallel career was really welcome during my part-time PhD, and it eventually became my primary interest, displacing my initial theoretical focus. I started getting hired to do consultancy and training workshops for libraries, graduate schools, research offices, publishers, charities, etc.

When I started writing a book about this, eventually published in 2016, I encountered a problem. It was clear academics could use social media in engaging and valuable ways, but often they didn’t. In fact, I found the workshops incredibly interesting because they frequently became about the problems encountered. So is it just a case of teaching academics to use social media in the “right” way and stop using it in the “wrong” way? Are social media platforms neutral tools which academics need to learn to use correctly? I could see this was the wrong concept, in that if it was like a hammer, it was a hammer continually tracking how you use it to adapt its functions to show you advertising. But I didn’t know what to replace it with.

The concept of platform helped immensely in this respect. Rather than a tool academics individually pick up and put down, it is an infrastructure connecting different groups together (including the people designing and operating the platform) in a way that changes behavior to serve the platform operator’s interests. There is freedom to use the platform, but what you see and value tends to shift subtly over time as people start to care about responses and follower counts. These interlock with existing academic systems, such as the intersection between popularity and prestige, and the role of metrics in demonstrating impact. Using the concept of platform helped me go from an individualized approach to an academic social media relational approach. It helped me offer better advice by helping understand the challenges inherent to the platform, rather than just using a tool incorrectly.

Platform studies is an interdisciplinary field growing significantly over about fifteen years. It was originally defined as “a set of approaches investigating the underlying computer systems supporting creative work” but expanded significantly since. I’d suggest two main currents: analytical approaches understanding mechanisms platforms operate and influence behavior, and a more agent-centered approach interested in how users produce cultures shaping platform direction.

This is my approach with social media and generative AI: professional cultures built around emerging technologies matter because the norms and standards established are a bulwark against platform influence. Only by reflexively building cultures can we ensure using platforms, rather than being used by them.

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