Internet – Platforms – Regulation: Coordination of Markets and Curation of Sociality

Ulrich Dolata

No 2020-02, Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, SOI Discussion Papers from University of Stuttgart, Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies

Abstract: The leading Internet groups, with their extensively networked platforms, have become the key players in the design and regulatory framing of the Internet in the course of the 2010s. This paper examines the mechanisms by which they fulfil their role as structurebuilding, rule-making and action-coordinating core actors in today's Web. The focus is on two essential regulatory areas: on the one hand, the private-sector organization and regulation of markets, in which they themselves, as platform operators, coordinate market processes and determine the conditions of competition; on the other hand, the tech- nically mediated structuring and curation of social relationships and social behavior, through which the platform operators assume far-reaching social ordering and regulatory functions. The few large platforms that today enable and coordinate large parts of private and public life on the Internet can - according to the thesis of this article - be understood as differentiated societal structures with a distinct institutional basis, which the platform operators shape and control to a considerable extent by means of their own rules, regulations and coordination bodies-up to the performance of quasi-sovereign tasks by the companies, which were previously reserved for state authorities and have so far largely been able to elude democratic legitimation and control.

Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-com, nep-ict and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/218821/1/1698741685.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:stusoi:202002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, SOI Discussion Papers from University of Stuttgart, Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().