Thomas Poell - Platforms and Cultural Production

With their revenues dwindling before their eyes, some beleaguered YouTubers shifted their time and attention to other platforms. Ethan and Hila Klein, for instance, announced they would redirect their programming to the Amazon-owned live-streaming platform Twitch, which offers creators more dynamic mechanisms of monetizing their content (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019). Others started to use Patreon, which allows fans to support creators directly through subscriptions (Caplan & Gillespie, 2020). But even though some creators managed to generate revenue across multiple platforms, the creator community can scarcely afford to ignore YouTube completely. In terms of reach and revenue, Twitch and other competing video-sharing and live-streaming platforms remain in YouTube’s hulking shadow.

The reason to retell the story of the Adpocalypse is because of both its specificity – that is, it illustrates the evolution of a new industry segment, ostensibly emerging at the interface of Hollywood and Silicon Valley (Cunningham & Craig, 2019) – and its broader import. The case thus testifies to a wider movement wherein cultural producers become dependent on platforms and, consequently, struggle to defend their position and interests. Like many other platforms, YouTube is subject to powerful network effects , meaning that an increase in viewers, advertisers, and creators makes the platform more valuable to each of the other groups, which in turn further inflates the number of viewers, advertisers, and creators. Because of its entrenched position, when YouTube exerts power by unilaterally deciding to reward and/or punish particular types of videos, it directly impacts thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of cultural workers. At the same time, the combination of YouTube’s business model and the implementation of its governance framework are one of a kind. Not all platforms rely on advertising revenue, nor do their systems of moderation adhere to uniform content standards.

In this book, we examine how the relations between platforms and cultural producers emerge and take shape throughout key phases of the production process: namely cultural creation, distribution, marketing , and monetization . Indeed, platform-wrought shifts in cultural production raise many questions, among them: how are the activities of cultural producers – from individual content creators and game app developers to news organizations and record labels – reconfigured when they integrate platforms into their operations? How does alignment and integration with platforms impact the economic sustainability of particular forms of cultural production? What types of content and services can and cannot be created, distributed, and monetized through platforms? What kinds of cultural content are made more or less visible by platforms? How does this affect the horizon of cultural expression – and for whom? And, finally, what are the consequences for the democratic character of cultural production and the distribution of power in the cultural realm?

Addressing these questions, we will show how the interactions between platforms and cultural producers unfold in ways that differ markedly across cultural industry segments and geographic regions. Platformization is not a single process of transformation, but, rather, constitutive of a wide variety of shifts shaped by the interactions between particular platforms and specific cultural producers. This book provides the conceptual tools to both examine these interactions and reflect on their implications. In so doing, we aim to develop a common language for scholars from different disciplines to compare and connect their research on specific instances of platform-based cultural production.

The interaction between platforms and cultural producers generates a process that Anne Helmond (2015) has described as platformization . In the context of cultural production, platformization can be understood as the penetration of digital platforms’ economic, infrastructural, and governmental extensions into the cultural industries, as well as the organization of cultural practices of labor, creativity, and democracy around these platforms (Nieborg & Poell, 2018). 2This section and the next will discuss how platforms and cultural producers are involved in the shifts in institutional relations and cultural practices at the heart of platformization. We start by focusing on platforms before directing attention to cultural producers and cultural production . The final section of this chapter lays out the central argument of the book and previews its organization.

Given the book’s conceptual focus on the cultural industries, it seems important to first delineate what is and what is not a platform in the context of cultural production. Building on business studies, critical political economy, and software studies, we define platforms as data infrastructures that facilitate, aggregate, monetize, and govern interactions between end-users and content and service providers (Poell et al., 2019). 3Following this conceptualization of platforms, we therefore understand platformization from an institutional perspective as the evolution of platform markets, infrastructures, and governance frameworks.

How platforms operate as institutions can be clearly observed in the case of YouTube, which allows for “frictionless entry,” or “the ability of users to quickly and easily join … and begin participating in the value creation that the platform facilitates” (Parker et al., 2016: 25). In this way, YouTube constitutes a market – one that aggregates and monetizes interactions among content creators, advertisers, and end-users (i.e., viewers). These interactions are, in turn, afforded by YouTube’s data infrastructure , which allows creators to seamlessly upload their content to be hosted on Google’s servers, while simultaneously enabling advertisers to target particular audience segments. This level of openness is distinctly different from the gatekeeping strategies employed by legacy media companies, which, in the words of Clay Shirky (2008: 98), revolve around “filter-then-publish,” as opposed to the platform strategy of “publish-then-filter.” The notion of filtering brings us to the crucial dimension of platform governance. To reduce friction that may emerge from unclear rules and regulations, YouTube has set out a governance framework . In its attempt to control and standardize platform-based interactions, YouTube provides codified rules (e.g., terms of service and creator guidelines) and developer documentation, as well as stipulations over who can access its tools and data infrastructure. YouTube, in other words, meets all the criteria of a platform.

There are also companies in the cultural sector that display characteristics of platforms and have been referred to as such by scholars and journalists; we argue, however, that they should be categorized differently. It is worth bearing in mind that digitization does not equal platformization . While the New York Times , Netflix, and The Walt Disney Company collect endless reams of data and use sophisticated algorithms to curate content, they are not platform companies (Lobato, 2019; Lotz, 2017). Instead, they should be labeled as media or entertainment companies, which primarily produce or license original content and are not directly economically and infrastructurally accessible to third parties. Video producers – whether big or small – cannot freely upload their clips to Netflix; the New York Times primarily uses its own website and apps to distribute its own news content; and The Walt Disney Company uses its vast library of intellectual property – from Mickey Mouse to Marvel superheroes – across its theme parks, TV stations, and digital outlets.