Platform values: an introduction to the #AoIR16 special issue

K.H.A. Leurs, Michael Zimmer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademic

Abstract

Marking a decade of exciting interdisciplinary internet research, this is the 10th Information, Communication and Society special issue that features research generated by the annual Association of Internet Research (AoIR) conferences. This issue consists of eight provocative articles selected from #AoIR2016, the 17th annual conference, held at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany from 5–8 October 2016. The #AoIR2016 conference theme Internet Rules! invited participants to address the complex interplay of digital technologies, business models and user practices. For some, the Internet rules! Others are ruled by the internet. Reflecting the emergent focus during the conference, this special issue addresses the Internet as a set of connected platforms that have various technical, social, cultural, political and figurative meanings, and seeks to understand rules as a set of normative values. Offering a primer on platform values, the contributions share a commitment to social justice, offer innovative theoretical interventions and empirically ground the workings of platform values from various scholarly perspectives. They show how normative digitally networked technologies are mutually shaped by top-down decisions such as the profit-oriented workings of algorithms that differentially value some users over others and bottom-up user practices that both sustain and subvert value-laden mechanisms.Platform values: an introduction to the #AoIR16 special issue
Original languageEnglish
Article number1
Pages (from-to)803-808
JournalInformation Communication and Society
Volume20
Issue number6
Publication statusPublished - 3 Jun 2017
EventThe 17th Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers: Internet Rules - Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Duration: 5 Oct 20168 Oct 2016
Conference number: 17
https://aoir.org/aoir2016/

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