The evolution of platforms as socio-material assemblages

The contribution aims to advance an alternative understanding of the economic evolution of Web 2.0 paradigm premised upon the theorization of platforms as socio-material assemblages. According to it, the current shape of digital platforms in terms of practices, policies, and infrastructure emerges from the relationships between users, companies, and algorithms and their continuous redefinition. Platforms, thus, become fields of constant negotiations between companies’ race for profit and users’ interests in performing their digital activities according to their needs. This approach entails an original strategy of research that recognizes the fundamental role played by users and algorithms in the Web 2.0 paradigm without limiting its focus on digital companies' logic. Platforms’ economic model is based upon network effect and, thus, cannot work without users’ central activity as content creators. This confers great bargaining power to them because corporations cannot lose them and, so, must adapt their policies to their requests and concerns. At the same time, the role of algorithms cannot be reduced to mere intermediaries of companies’ will. Surely, specific aims are inscribed in their design, but, when deployed in the assemblages, they modify in unpredictable ways the social reality due to users’ often unexpected perception and adaptation to them. Therefore, adopting a concept of actor-network theory, they can be defined as mediators. Following these acknowledgments, to understand the evolution of platforms is fundamental to look at the relationships established between these three elements. In particular, as suggested by actor-network theory, the focus must be on controversies, namely on the moments where these links are contested and redefined. The study of these crucial events not only can highlight the distributed agency in the shaping of platforms but can also explain and compare the different evolutions of digital assemblages and of the practices there performed.