Message posted on 21/01/2020

Platforms and infrastructures in media and cultural industries - Track at the next STS Italia Conference (Trieste, June 18-20, 2020)

Dear colleagues, we would like to draw your attention to the conference track
we are organizing at the next STS Italia conference in Trieste
(June 18-20, 2020),
titled:

Platforms and infrastructures in media and cultural industries

In the last few years, major changes in cultural industries and content
distribution have been moulded around the affordances coming from media
platforms and digital infrastructures. The broad role of platforms in
today’s society has been addressed by pointing out that they are not just
neutral carriers or facilitators, but rather distinctive socio- technical
entities, able (among other things) to create new relationships, produce
inequalities, modify professional jobs and consumer practices (Gillespie,
2018; van Dijck et al. 2018) and even to reshape cultural content’s
aesthetic.

The role of platforms in cultural industries (from Spotify, Netflix and
YouTube to those focused on ebooks, videogames photo sharing and newsmaking)
has been addressed in STS and media studies by looking at their
infrastructural dimensions (Parks, Starosielski, 2015; Sterne 2012; Peters,
2015). A specific emphasis has been put on the mutual interactions between
platforms and their infrastructural qualities, especially by looking at the
convergence between the internet-based infrastructural services and the
emerging role of different platforms in media and communication, thus
outlining the ongoing process of “platformization”, intended as a crucial
structural shift in how value, meanings and practices are today created in
cultural industries (Plantin et al. 2018; Nieborg & Poell 2018; Plantin, &
Punathambekar, 2019).

The track has the aim of collecting contributions able to investigate these
emerging trends in the role of platforms and infrastructures in cultural
industries, addressing different issues and perspectives related to the
increasingly important role of media platforms for the circulation of
different kinds of cultural contents, including music, video, photos, books,
news, videogames, etc. We therefore encourage both researchers and cultural
industry practitioners from different areas (media studies, S&TS, film
studies, digital humanities, media anthropology, science communication, etc.)
to submit theoretically, empirically, and/or methodologically oriented papers
exploring some of the following issues:

− The role of platforms in reshaping different sectors of cultural
industries

− The notion of ‘platformization’ in relation to the circulation of
culture

− Infrastructure studies and the circulation of cultural contents

− Inequalities, vulnerabilities and public values in platforms and
infrastructures

− Algorithms and automated system of content suggestions

− The political economy of platforms in cultural production and
distribution

− The role of platforms in shaping the aesthetics of music, videos, books,
news and other cultural contents

− Users’ practices and the cultural consumption through platforms.

− The shifting roles of professionals and workers in cultural industries
platforms

− The integration of cultural contents within social media and other
mainstream platforms

− Interfaces of and interactions with digital platforms


Here the full call:
https://a7f67c59-118d-44bf-9b5c-7aae7deef875.filesusr.com/ugd/8486e6_d3f364fc
83dd42b1b1aa0b7e05d36ba4.pdf



Thanks!

Tiziano Bonini (University of Siena)
Paolo Magaudda (University of Padova)
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