Conceptualization of Analytical Domains of Platform Governance Ecosystem

Document Type : Review Article

Authors

1 PhD Student of Public Policy, Faculty of Management and Strategic Planning, Imam Hossein University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor of Public Policy, Faculty of Management and Strategic Planning, Imam Hossein University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This research aims to analyze and examine "platform governance" as a new human innovation in response to the complexities of public problems through a systematic review of relevant studies in this area. For this purpose, 67 articles that were most relevant to the keywords of the platform governance area were selected from all articles published in reputable international scientific databases from 2016 to 2023. Accordingly, public policy problems are inherently complex because they are undeniably related to the people. The expansion of information and communication technologies has led governments to consider taking advantage of these new capabilities, moving away from traditional single tools, moving towards multiple tools and more participatory tools, and finally using platform tools that are more compatible with the networked structure of modern societies. Based on the research findings, four interrelated actors can be identified in today's platform ecosystem: platform, platform owners, Platform users, and complementors. On the one hand, governments seek platforms as a tool for governance and administration, and on the other hand, these platforms are able to govern end-users in a new way based on their function and nature. That is, they are able to make decisions that threaten the public interest of societies; therefore, governments must adopt a type of governance in relation to platforms. Also, the new nature of platforms puts another group of actors at risk, which in the literature is referred to as complementors, and these individuals are responsible for supplying goods or services on the platform. How platform-owning companies deal with these individuals forms the basis of the fourth concept.

Keywords

References

  1. Howlett, M. (2024). Designing Public Policy
  2. Platform Governance in the Presence of Within-complementor Interdependencies: Evidence from the Rideshare Industry. (2023). Management Science, 70(2).
  3. Robert W. Gehl, Diana Zulli. (2023). The digital covenant: non-centralized platform governance on the mastodon social network. information, communication & society, 26(16), 3275-3291.
  4. Wright, L. (2022). Automated Platform Governance Through Visibility and Scale: On the Transformational Power of AutoModerator. Social Media + Society, 1-11.
  5. A Teh, T.-H. (2022). Platform Governance. American Economic Association, 14(3).
  6. Marin Jovanovic, David Sj¨odin, Vinit Parida. (2022). Co-evolution of platform architecture, platform services, and platform governance: Expanding the platform value of industrial digital platforms. technovation, 118.
  7. Liang Chen , Jingtao Yi , Sali Li, Tony W. Tong. (2021). Platform Governance Design in Platform Ecosystems: Implications for Complementors’ Multihoming Decision. Journal of management, 48(3).
  8. Mark Fenwick · Joseph A. McCahery · Erik P. M. Vermeulen. (2019). The End of ‘Corporate’ Governance: Hello ‘Platform’ governance. European Business Organization Law Review, 20, 171-199.
  9. Yuchen Zhang, Jingjing Li , Tony W. Tong. (2020). Platform governance matters: How platform gatekeeping affects knowledge sharing among complementors. Strategic Management Journal.
  10. Gorwa, R. (2019). The platform governance triangle: conceptualising the informal regulation of online. INTERNET POLICY REVIEW, 8(2).
  11. Gorwa, R. (2019). What is platform governance? INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY, 22(6), 854-871.
  12. Suzor, N. (2020). A constitutional moment: How we might reimagine platform governance. computer law & security review.
  13. Tomasz Janowski, Elsa Estevez, Rehema Baguma. (2018). Platform governance for sustainable development: Reshaping citizen-administration relationships in the digital age. government information Qauarterly.
  14. Schnellenbach, J. (2021). How algorithms rule the world: Democratic algorithms for the public sphere. Oxford University Press.
  15. Srnicek, J. (2016). Platform capitalism. John Wiley & Sons.
  16. Wu, T. (2018). The curse of bigness: Antitrust in the new gilded age. W. W. Norton & Company.
  17. Abdulrahaman, M. D., Faruk, N., Oloyede, A. A., Surajudeen-Bakinde, N. T., Olawoyin, L. A., Mejabi, O. V., ... & Azeez, A. L. (2020). Multimedia tools in the teaching and learning processes: A systematic review. Heliyon, 6(11).
  18. Biermann, F., Pattberg, P., Brock, A., & Mayer, A. (2010). Global governance: A transformation perspective. Environmental Policy and Governance, 20(3), 184-198.
  19. Matias, J. N., & Mou, M. (2018). Civilservant: Community-led experiments in platform governance. In 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM.
  20. Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Stoker, G. (1998). Governance as theory: Five propositions. International Social Science Journal, 50 (155), 17–28.
  21. Gillespie, T. (2018b). Regulation of and by platforms. In J. Burgess, A. Marwick, & T. Poell (Eds.) , The SAGE handbook of social media (pp. 254–278). 
  22. Gillespie, T. (2018a). Custodians of the internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  23. Suzor, N. (2019). Lawless: The secret rules that govern our digital lives (Draft). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  24. Suzor, N., Van Geelen, T., & Myers West, S. (2018). Evaluating the legitimacy of platform governance: A review of research and a shared research agenda. International Communication Gazette. 
  25. Baldwin, R., & Parker, G. (2019). Platform revolution: How networked markets are transforming the economy and remaking society. Harvard Business Press.
  26. Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the internet: Platforms, content moderation, Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. MIT Press.
  27. Meijer, A. (2019). Platform governance: A research agenda. Internet Policy Review, 8(4).
  28. Bäckstrand, K. (2006). Multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development: rethinking legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness. European Environment, 16(5), 290–306.
  29. Nooren, P., van Gorp, N., van Eijk, N., & Fathaigh, RÓ. (2018). Should we regulate digital platforms? A new framework for Evaluating policy options. Policy & Internet, 10(3), 264–301.
  30. Linders, D. (2012). From e-government to we-government: Defining a typology for citizen coproduction in the age of social media. Government Information Quarterly, 29(4), 446–454.
  31. Emerson, K., Nabatchi, T., & Balogh, S. (2012). An Integrative framework for collaborative governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 22(1), 1–29.
  32. Nieborg, D. B., & Poell, T. (2018). The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity. New Media & Society. doi:10.1177/1461444818769694
  33. Helberger, N., Pierson, J., & Poell, T. (2018). Governing online platforms: From contested to cooperative responsibility. The Information Society, 34(1), 1–14. doi:10.1080/01972243.2017.1391913
  34. James, E. (2010). Public policy and the global education agenda. International Journal of Educational Development, 30(2), 151-157.
  35. Villeneuve, J. (2017). Citizen-administration relationships. Global encyclopedia of public administration, public policy, and governance (pp. 1–4).
  36. Kaufmann, D., & Kraay, A. (2008). Governance and macroeconomics. Journal of Public Economics, 92(1-2), 1023-1041.
  37. Kooiman, J. (2008). Governing as governance. Public Management Review, 10(4), 439-462.
  38. Bogost, I., & Montfort, N. (2007). New media as material constraint: An introduction to platform studies. In Proceedings of the first international HASTAC conference (pp. 176–193). Durham, NC: Lulu Press. 
  39. Bogost, I., & Montfort, N. (2009). Platform studies: Frequently questioned answers. In Proceedings of the digital arts and culture conference. Irvine, CA. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/01r0k9br
  40. Gupta, A., & Mason, M. (2016). Disclosing or obscuring? The politics of transparency in global climate governance. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 18, 82–90.
  41. Mc Lennan, A., & Ngoma, W. Y. (2004). Quality governance for sustainable development? Progress in Development Studies, 4(4), 279–293.
  42. Lange, P., Driessen, P. P. J., Sauer, A., Bornemann, B., & Burger, P. (2013). Governing towards sustainability—Conceptualizing modes of governance. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 15(3), 403–425.
  43. Anheier, M. K. (2004). Civil society and social development: A critical review. World Development, 32(3), 347-376.
  44. Meier, P. (2000). Political institutions, economic growth, and inequality. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2445.
  45. Nye, J. S. (2008). Power and legitimacy in the 21st century. International Affairs, 84(1), 1-20.
  46. Folke, C., Carpenter, S., Elmqvist, T., Gunderson, L., Holling, C. S., & Walker, B. (2002). Resilience and sustainable development: building adaptive capacity in a world of transformations. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, 31(5), 437–440.
  47. Rosenau, J. N. (1992). Governance in an uncertain world.
  48. Baldwin, R., & Parker, G. (2019). Platform revolution: How networked markets are transforming the economy and remaking society. Harvard Business Press.
  49. Berkman Klein, J., Walsh, K. A., Crawford, M., & Schultz, D. (2019). Rethinking platform governance: Multi-stakeholder cooperation and emerging global norms. SSRN Electronic Journal.
  50. Janowski, T., Holm, J., & Estevez, E. (2013). Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance. ACM Press International Conference Proceedings Series. 
  51. Janssen, M., & Estevez, E. (2013). Lean government and platform-based governance—Doing more with less. Government Information Quarterly, 30(1), S1–S8. Janssen,
  52. Kitchenham, B., Brereton, O.P., Budgen, D., Turner, M., Bailey, J., Linkman, S., 2009. Systematic literature reviews in software engineering–a systematic literature review. Software Technol. 51 (1), 7–15.
  53. Bogdanor, V. (Ed.). (2005). Joint-Up Government. Oxford University Press.
  54. Brousseau, E., & Vergeer, M. (2017). Governing algorithms: A multi-stakeholder approach. Information, Communication & Society, 20(7), 927-946.
  55. De Stefano, M. (2019). Co-regulation: Can it work? How can it be made more effective? Computer Law & Security Review, 35(2), 105231.
  56. Heeks, R. (2010). Regulation in a hyperconnected world: The role of new regulatory spaces. The Journal of Development Studies, 46(9), 1637-1650.
  57. Meijer, A. (2019). Platform governance: A research agenda. Internet Policy Review, 8(4).
  58. Mittelstadt, B., Wachter, S., & Floridi, L. (2019). Against algorithmic transparency: “Opening the black box” and the challenges of algorithmic accountability. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(4), 181-197.
  59. Stoker, G. (1998). Governance as theory: Five propositions. International Social Science Journal, 50 (155), 17–28
Iranian Journal of Public Policy
Volume 10, Issue 3
2024
Pages 125-142

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics