Marketing Theory (Special Issue): The Platformization of Consumer

Culture
Alessandro Caliandro, University of Pavia, Department of Political and Social Sciences

Alessandro Gandini, University of Milano, Department of Social and Political Sciences

Lucia Bainotti, University of Amsterdam, Department of Media Studies

Guido Anselmi, University of Milano, Department of Social and Political Sciences

This special issue aims at encouraging scholars to reflect on, discuss, theorise and systematically
explore processes of platformization of consumer culture unfolding within digital environments.
Since during the last decade many consumer activities migrated to digital platforms, consumer
culture went through a process of platformization (Duffy et al., 2020), insofar the systems of
meanings and practices consumers articulate around products, brands or services tend to be more
and more shaped by the socio-technical architecture of digital environments themselves (Carah &
Angus, 2018) – besides and beyond traditional social institutions, like classes (Bourdieu, 1984),
subcultures (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995) or communities (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). Of
course, social classes as well as consumer subcultures and communities still exist and exert an
influence on consumer activities; nevertheless, such social formations have been profoundly
reconfigured by the advent of digital platforms (Marres, 2017). Given these conditions, we think
that more research needs to be done regarding this emerging and pervasive phenomenon, especially
by experts in the field of marketing and consumer culture theory (Arnould and Thompson, 2005).

When talking about platforms, we commonly refer to big tech companies such as Google, Apple,
Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM). According to Srnicek, platforms are “digital
infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact; they position themselves as
intermediaries that bring together different users: advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers
and physical objects” (2017: 48). This ‘position’ is not neutral (Gillespie, 2010), since, platforms
are explicitly designed and meant to extract data from the very users they host. These massive and
systematic processes of data extraction are at the base of the business model of digital platforms,
which use data for: a) internal marketing purposes (i.e. increasing the platform’s traffic); b) selling
them to third parties (for their own scopes of advertising and marketing); develop new products
and/or markets (vocal assistants, self-driving cars, etc.) (Arvidsson, 2019). In order to meet their
business purposes, platforms not only need an enclosed space where to observe, track and predict
users behaviour; they need to design spaces where to constrain users activities into standardized
patterns of action in order to make their behaviours predictable (Zuboff, 2019). For example, social
media platforms are well suited for these purposes, since they provide users with free tools to
produce creative content, create communities and express their identities; tools that are,
nonetheless, purposely designed to capture such social-cultural process, transform them into data
points and convert them into marketing and business products (Van Dijk and Poell, 2013).

Studies on ‘platformization’ are gaining traction in recent years and cover different key topics:
platformization of the Web (Helmond, 2015), platformization of capitalism (Srnicek, 2107),
platformization of society (Van Dijk et al., 2018), platformization of education (Kumar et al., 2019).
More recently, reflecting on the relations between digital platforms and cultural industries, Duffy et
al. (2020) came up with the concept of platformization of culture, referring to a process of
production of culture that involves the “penetration of economic, governmental, and infrastructural
extensions of digital platforms into the web and app ecosystems, fundamentally affecting the
operations of the cultural industries” (p. 4276). In a special issue dedicated to the platformization of
culture (edited by Social Media + Society), Duffy et al. (2020) bring many examples of this
phenomenon, showing, for instance, how YouTube offers marginalized social groups the
opportunity to pursue a career as fashion bloggers (Bishop, 2020), or how communities of
influencers collaborate to manipulate the Instagram algorithm to gain visibility for their posts
(O’Meara, 2020), or how Spotify’s algorithms and human curators supplant traditional cultural
intermediaries, becoming new music gatekeepers (Bonini & Gandini, 2020).

Anyway, so far, few scholars have tried to address the phenomenon of platformization of consumer
culture (Airoldi, 2021; Jain et al., 2020). This is a notable gap, since consumption is not simply one
topic among the others that might be interesting to explore on digital media, but rather a key
phenomenon that underpins the logic of functioning of the contemporary digital landscape.
Consider, for example, that among the top applications that dominate the contemporary 2.0 Web (as
well as govern its functioning), there are commercial platforms like Google, Facebook, Amazon,
Uber and Airbnb, whose business models consist in extracting data from consumers in order to
deliver them products, experiences and advertising. Consider also that Social media (like Instagram
or Facebook) or sharing platforms (like Airbnb or TripAdvisor) can be considered as prime sites for
observing cultural processes and their nexus with platforms’ technicalities and logics – since they
provide users with a vast array of tools for content creation, self-presentation and community
building.

Given the research gaps mentioned above, we are therefore looking for contributors who are willing
to theorize the phenomenon of platformization of consumer culture, building on conceptual and/or
empirical work. Possible questions to address (but not limited to these):

o How do digital platforms reconfigure brand communities?

o How do advertising practices are reconfigured by digital platforms’ logics and affordances?
o The impact of fake news on consumer culture
o The impact of digital platforms on music teste
o The impact of digital platforms on food culture
o Platformization and brand storytelling (from the perspective of companies)
o Platformization and brand storytelling (from the perspective of consumers)
o Do platforms radicalize consumption practices?
o Influencer culture and platforms’ logics
o The impact of social bots on consumer culture
o The impact of digital platforms on processes of authenticity construction
o Platformization of fluid consumption
o Platformization of consumer identity
o Brand activism on social media platforms
o The impact of ephemeral social media platforms and content (e.g., TikTok, Instagram
Stories, etc.) on consumer culture
o Smartphones as portable platforms for consumption
o Algorithmic brand culture
o Algorithmic mediation of consumption ideologies and desires
o Visualizing the platformization of consumer culture

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTION AND TIMESCALE

All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review. The deadline for submission is 10th March
2022. Papers accepted are expected to be online by 2023. Authors are encouraged to refer to the
Marketing Theory website for instructions on submitting a paper and for more information about
the journal. Manuscripts should be submitted, as normal, through the ScholarOne Manuscripts
portal https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mtq. Expressions of interest and questions about
expectations, requirements, etc. should be directed to the special issue editors – (Alessandro
Caliandro: alessandro.caliandro@unipv.it).

References

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