Platformization as new social order: PI Seppo Poutanen

The project delivers cross-cutting and multidisciplinary analyses of the emerging platformization as the potential future engine of social transformation within Europe. Recent research shows that digital platforms bring novelty in terms of how they a) structure and govern markets with a tendency towards platform and data monopolies, b) intermediate between multiple actors with unilaterally imposed rules and conditions of operation, and c) construct new digital user subjectivities with consequences in material lives (Poutanen et al. 2021). The project is based on empirical and theoretical analyses that range from traditional questions to STS inspired analyses of platformization and projectification. In this theoretical further-development of the neoliberalist platform society analysis and the possibilities offered by Whiteheadian process ontology, for example, are central.

The project draws advantage of the PI’s broad and multidisciplinary social science background (sociology, science and technology studies, philosophy), research on platform economy and society, and methodological strengths.