The Platform Social is an Edinburgh-based research network of postgraduate and early career researchers studying the digital economy and society. Founded in October 2022 by Elif Buse Doyuran, Joe Noteboom, Isadora Dullaert, Addie McGowan, and Stella Kyratzi, our work spans sociology, political economy, organisational theory, and interdisciplinary studies of markets, cities, and technology. We focus on a multitude of topics, ranging from citizenship and placemaking to education, labour, and markets, and we have built a vibrant community through regular gatherings, events, and initiatives.
What brought us together and out of our Covid-complicated silos was our shared empirical interest in how digital platform interventions are reshaping the societies, communities, and economies that we study. The inverted “Platform Social” twists the “social platform” to convey our positioning as a social-scholar community formed by a shared interest in how platforms work, socially and socio-technically.
We welcome anyone who is working on similar topics to join us for our hybrid reading sessions and occasional workshops. We host regular reading groups for PhDs and ECRs to critically engage with recent scholarship across disciplines, anchored by an interest in platforms and critical data studies. We also hold larger events, such as workshops and seminars, to more formally engage with themes such as publishing, theorising, and doing/reflecting on digital social scholarship.
Would you like to get involved?
Request to join our Teams channel, or contact an organiser below to learn more.
Current organisers include:
Stay tuned for an upcoming Spring 2025 event, sponsored by the British Sociological Association.
Past events
Book publishing workshop with Paul Stevens & The Platform Social
5 November 2024
In partnership with the Journal of Cultural Economy, we welcomed Paul Stevens with Bristol University Press to join us in conversation about academic book publishing with members of The Platform Social, Donald MacKenzie, Liz McFall, and Robin Williams. This open event welcomed people in all stages of their book publishing journey. Contributors shared insights and practical tips for choosing publishers, approaching them, and readying work for a monograph. The event encouraged panelists and participants to share their candid experiences with book publishing and explore the current state of the industry.
The Ordinal Society: A conversation with the authors, Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy
1 July 2024
This event was chaired by Afshin Mehrpouya and in partnership with the Culture, Accounting and Society (CAS) Research Network, University of Edinburgh Business School, and Data Civics at Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI), and sponsored by the Journal of Cultural Economy. At the event, members of The Platform Social along with Donald MacKenzie discussed Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy’s new book, The Ordinal Society, with the authors. This lively discussion explored the authors’ critique of how digital capitalism is reformatting our world.
Tokens, bits, cookies and nudges: How platforms took over the world
30 November 2023
Welcome to the age of the platform! From Twitch, to Coinbase, to Airbnb, platforms are changing how we make money and have fun all the while redefining everything from banking to marketing, from travel to games, intimacy to work. But what is it exactly that they do to us and we do to them? This workshop explored platform cultural-economy relations from a variety of vantage points, in the company of Rachel O’Dwyer (National College of Art & Design, Dublin) and Robert Cluley (University of Birmingham). Platform Social researchers shared their recent work on changing marketing epistemologies, streaming cultures and economies, markets and pricing technologies, and nudge’s travels into Silicon Valley. We concluded the day with Rachel O’Dwyer discussing her new book, Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform, longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award.
Since October 2022, we have built a vibrant community through regular gatherings, events, and initiatives. For more information, including upcoming events and past readings discussed, please visit The Platform Social Blog. To join our mailing list, please email Addie, Elif or Joe.
From Data to Theory: Theorising at the intersection of digital sociology, economic sociology and STS
13 October 2023
With support from the British Sociological Association, this Regional Postgraduate Day Event opened our network to over thirty postgraduate and early career researchers from around the UK, who were invited to explore different ways of understanding and theorising the digital through empirical research. ‘From Data to Theory’, had a double meaning, referring both to the growing significance of data-things to theories of the social, and to the practice of theorising our own research data—how to find meaning and significance in what is collected. In addition to small group theorising discussions, we heard from Liz McFall, Karen Gregory, and Ben Collier about how they approach theorising, and our keynote Francesca Sobande unpacked how she theorises rapidly changing digital culture in practice.
The Platform Social Inaugural Workshop
25 April 2023
Our first workshop introduced our network to a broader audience, bringing together forty scholars interested in research done on and with digital platforms. The day-long event featured working paper presentations from Platform Social members from both the Universities of Helsinki and Edinburgh, in conversation with provocations from Franck Cochoy (University of Toulouse), Minna Ruckenstein (University of Helsinki) and Donald MacKenzie (University of Edinburgh) who reflected on their recent work exploring how platforms and their algorithms feel, move, trade and “socialise” us. The event also marked the debut book talk for Minna Ruckenstein’s The Feel of Algorithms.
