Political participatory platforms may look similar but, in practice, they redistribute power in very different ways. This article introduces a three-dimensional cube to compare their political governance, software affordances, and infrastructural dependencies, using cases from Italy, Spain, Argentina and Taiwan to show how specific sociotechnical configurations shape the effects of online political participation.
Research articles on INFRASTRUCTURE & STANDARDS
The concept of the "superplatform" presents a simple way to describe Google’s vast and complex online ad business as a dual-core system that merges market power, infrastructural dominance, and supply chain demarketisation.
This article explores working conditions in Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) and proposes mechanisms for DAOs to become more equitable workplaces, aligned with the solidarity economy.
The Drivers Cooperative reveals how diverging stakeholders in platform cooperatives can fracture in their pursuit of developing these platforms.
Digital platforms are entering community supported agriculture. This paper explores what a cooperative model for such platforms entails for work, governance and accessibility in the solidarity economy domain.
Beyond Big Tech: how Catalan cooperatives are adopting digital tools through collective learning and commons-based principles.
A sociological analysis of the term ‘trust’ in the context of blockchain technology and science.
The article analyses how the Digital Services Act can be used to counter mental harms associated with using social media, including addiction, attention depletion, anxiety, and depression.
What does a recent decision by the European Union’s Court of Justice – ruling that IAB Europe is liable under the GDPR for a technical standard it wrote – mean for internet standard-setting organisations?
In the shadow of missiles and malware, the open internet becomes the first casualty of survival.