This paper examines the role of platformization in nation branding processes. Drawing on user guides produced by platforms like Instagram and TikTok for official government accounts, as well as the content posted to the accounts of nations like Perú (@Peru), the United States (@VisittheUSA), Norway (@VisitNorway), and more, this paper examines how governments and nations themselves have begun to produce content optimized for social media entertainment platforms in order to position themselves as interactive media brands. I argue that the use of social media entertainment in nation branding processes positions platforms as a locus of power in the machinations of national and transnational networks of cultural production and capital accumulation within the global cultural economy more broadly. This paper seeks to contribute an understanding of how platforms like Instagram and TikTok (and their associated parent companies) engage directly in struggles over ideological and technological forms of power at the same time that nation-states attempt to harness and benefit from platformized forms of cultural production through a constellation of regulatory, governance, and policy regimes.

Existing scholarship on platform urbanism has largely focused on how digital platforms are remediating the socioeconomic and spatial structures of day-time activities. Few have examined how digital platforms are reconfiguring the rhythms and patterns of the urban nightscape. Yet, as a caricature of the day, the night allows us to observe the social tensions caught between surveillance and pleasure, tensions that are core to the study of “the growing presence and power of digital platforms in cities” (Sadowski, 2020, p. 448). Underground electronic/dance music culture (EDMC), in particular, epitomize such tensions between surveillance and pleasure. From social media (e.g., Instagram), messaging platforms (e.g., Telegram), to community forums (e.g., Resident Advisor), the advent of mobile digital platforms complicates these communities’ commitment to a shared culture of secrecy by re-configuring the rhythms of sociality.

This paper explores how the architecture and design of these platforms are reconfiguring the rhythms of scene participation in underground EDMC. To do so, I conducted a multi-sited ethnography from 2020 to 2022 that traces the uses of digital platforms among event promoters and event joiners in Berlin, Taipei, and New York. This paper offers a timely examination of the shifting relationships between media technologies and urban nightlife and bridges such analysis with the recent debates on platform urbanism.

Gambling games are composed of risk and contingency - the gambler stakes their bet on the spin or a reel or a roulette wheel completely dependent on forces outside of their control, uncertain of the outcome. This potent combination is not only being used to fuel the nearly $500 billion USD global gambling industry, but also to organise the current app economy. Digital platforms, their complementors, and their users are brought together by risk and contingency into a dynamic political economy, with the platform accruing the most advantage (Poell et al., 2021). Unpacking these unequal and sometimes precarious relations requires studying a “representative commodity” (Kline et al., 2003). Social casino apps, a niche, but still significant digital game commodity, embody how risk and contingency manifests in the app economy (Nieborg & Poell, 2018; Zittrain, 2008). In particular, when other industries interface with digital platforms, they become subject to their institutional imperatives (Gorwa, 2019). Social casino apps are representative of how platforms have been able to influence and shape even niche genres of digital leisure, but also the constraints and resistance to these techniques. In this paper, as a political economist of communication, I conduct a structural and critical analysis of the social casino industry, using institutional analysis as my methodology.

Dating applications represent a paradox: on the one hand, they provide a monetized platform for people to form relationships, yet on the other hand, the more people who find partners, the less revenue goes to the company. With this paradox as a backdrop, this extended abstract examines the business model of dating applications by address the following research question: What characterizes the business models of dating applications? To provide a nuanced picture of this, we conducted a 2022-study combining data about dating apps and app users: (A) 22 in-depth interviews with current and previous users (aged 24–49 years) of Norwegian dating applications users; (B) a systematic analysis of 30 serious dating apps in Google Play and Apple’s App Store; and (C) a diary study of four of the 30 dating applications. The findings reveals that dating apps follows a business model that creates revenue through a mix of an in-app purchase-model and subscription fees. The apps typically market themselves as free, yet they use several dark design and gamification features to create and spark emotional curiosity and engagement that in turn brings in revenue to dating app companies. Several of the users stated that they have experienced the apps as manipulative, emotionally exhausting and that they created the same kind of “addiction” or “cravings” they experienced in social media. Clearly, design is not only power, design gives the dating app companies power where designing for emotional engagement is a key value-creating element in their business models.

“Super apps” are on the rise and gaining popularity worldwide, especially in Southeast Asia, India and Africa. These are “do-everything apps” that offer a wide range of services in a single interface, making them more integrated into people's lives. Super apps thus highlight the organisation, political economy and geopolitics of the platformisation process in the app economy. While most studies on super apps focus on Chinese and Southeast Asian apps, this paper examines super apps from around the world to better understand and discuss the phenomenon. Specifically, it examines and discusses (1) what “super apps” are, (2) by whom they were developed, (3) when they were created or how they evolved over time, and (4) where—in which countries or regions or parts of the world—they emerged. We provide a typology of super-app constellations based on the different characteristics identified in a global collection of 40 super-apps. We discuss the local or regional differences between apps, their historical emergence, modes of capital accumulation and the challenges and implications arising from them for critical research. The rise of super-apps and their integration into people's daily lives in general invites us to delve deeper into the relatedness and situatedness of apps, and focus in particular on the unique conglomeration processes currently taking place in the mobile ecosystem.