Digital platforms, a boon or a bane for democracy

This graduate course critically examines the transformative impact of digital platforms on public discourse and political participation in democratic societies. The course is divided into three parts, concerning the power of digital platforms; the impact of digital platforms on public discourse; and the platformization of political parties and social movements. Part I focuses on the ability of digital platforms to influence institutions and shape public discourse by controlling the very infrastructure that increasingly enables governing and participating in political life. After considering different theoretical models for conceptualizing platforms, the course focuses on arguments that frame Big Tech's data extraction practices as a continuation of colonialism and as harbingers of a new phase of capitalist accumulation and expansion. These readings will allow students to grasp the politics of platforms as a precondition of the politics through platforms. Part II focuses on the emergence of social media as a privately owned but massively participated discursive arena. On the one hand, scholars have argued that social media and social messaging applications expand opportunities for democratic participation. These include increased access to information and reduced costs of publication, greater inclusion of marginalized voices in public debate, increased transparency, and the emergence of new forms of collective action and political mobilization. On the other hand, the scholarship on digital platforms has highlighted a host of challenges to the quality of democratic discourse, including the spreading of disinformation and fake news, echo chambers and polarization, manipulation through algorithmic curation, and the troubling implications of digital surveillance and content moderation for freedom of expression and association. The third and final part of the course considers the phenomenon of platformization in two different but related arenas: the arena of party politics; and the arena of social movement organizing and mobilization. We will see how the impact of platformization on these two arenas is uneven, context-dependent, and often leading to contradictory outcomes.