The continuing growth of major digital platforms is reshaping societal relationships and giving rise to new power relations – between platforms and users, platforms and business, platforms and regulators, platforms and researchers.
Digital platforms have the power to materially affect how we use the Internet, but this also generates responses and resistance from users. Their central role in online commerce enables them to shape the business models that depend on them, but such power can be transient and subject to challenge. National and transnational regulators and legislators, in particular, are increasingly making attempts to rein in the power of digital platforms and enforce more transparency in their activities. Research that draws on digital trace data, qualitative investigation, and industry information to observe and analyse the technological and institutional practices of digital platforms, and their implications for users, businesses, and society at large, is critical to informing such efforts.
This research group draws on an interdisciplinary team of researchers from law, communication, and computer science to conduct such research, investigate digital platform power, and develop new ways of understanding and governing platform dynamics.
DMRC research programs
This group contributes to the research within the following DMRC research programs:
Computational Communication & Culture