Digital Platforms, Imperialism and Political Culture [Paperback]

In the networked twenty-first century, digital platforms have significantly influenced capital accumulation and digital culture. Platforms, such as social network sites (e.g. Facebook), search engines (e.g. Google), and smartphones (e.g. iPhone), are increasingly crucial because they function as major digital media intermediaries. Emerging companies in non-Western countries have created unique platforms, controlling their own national markets and competing with Western-based platform empires in the global markets. The reality though is that only a handful of Western countries, primarily the U.S., have dominated the global platform markets, resulting in capital accumulation in the hands of a few mega platform owners. This book contributes to the platform imperialism discourse by mapping out several core areas of platform imperialism, such as intellectual property, the global digital divide, and free labor, focusing on the role of the nation-state alongside transnational capital.

Preface  Part 1: Imperialism is Back  1. Platform Technologies and Political Culture  2. The Evolution of Imperialism in the 21st Century  Part 2: Platform Politics  3. Construction of Platform Imperialism  4. Platform Politics in Nation-States  5. Intellectual Properties in the Digital Economy  Part 3: Political Economy of Platform Technologies  6. User Commodities as Free Labor in the Social Media Era  7. Challenge to the Global Digital Divide  8. The Future of Platforms

This book is a timely and important contribution to our understanding of imperialism in an age of digital media. Advancing his theory of platform imperialism, Jin manages to eloquently illustrate the contingency of new technologies on the global inequalities of the contemporary world order. This is a very welcome and sophisticated intervention in lc+