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Abstract

The emerging field of platform studies has sparked an ongoing debate regarding the meaning and utility of the term 'platform' within the academic community. This paper explores the contested nature of the term 'platform,' which has been employed as a metaphor, a conceptual framework for interpretation, and a keyword in digital discourse. The initial section traces the origins of platform discourse and the evolution of platform thinking. The second section utilizes cultural semiotics to reconstruct the metaphor's utility as a pragmatic instrument of knowledge. The third section delves into the contested meanings of the 'platform' by mapping twenty metaphors employed by scholars in diverse fields, including management, political economy, software studies, urbanism, and economic sociology. This section also organizes the metaphors in four conceptual categories related to the operations of the digital platform. The final part offers reflections on the 'platform' as a novel organizational form and assesses the overall usefulness of the term in academic discourse.

Keywords

Platform studies platform metaphors platform thinking platform discourse platform keyword platformization

The metaphor is that artifice that allows to speak metaphorically.

Umberto Eco

Introduction

The term “platform” fundamentally operates as a metaphor (Gillespie, 2010), and in academic discourse is compared to various entities by creating metaphors of the platform. This metaphorical foundation of the platform as a fundamental “keyword” of the digital discourse (Lovink, 2017; Peters, 2016) raises critical questions about how it shapes the field of platform studies. What metaphors does the term “platform” connote, and how do they delineate the boundaries of this emerging academic discipline? In this context, is the platform a useful theoretical abstraction?

Metaphors have long played a crucial role in shaping and structuring our understanding of the world, and their importance has only intensified with the advent of the Internet and personal computers (Van Boomen, 2014). Examples range from the “information superhighway” to the “archive,” and more recent to “data as oil” and “cloud computing” (Wyatt, 2021). While there is a substantial body of academic literature on the use and influence of metaphors in new media, critical internet studies, and social theory (Chun, 2011; Hayles, 2001; Le Roux and Parry, 2020; Markham and Tiidenberg, 2020; Ossewaarde, 2019), there is currently no research specifically addressing metaphors related to digital platforms. This paper seeks to address this gap by analyzing the political construction and strategic deployment of platform metaphors within academic discourse. It does so by gathering 20 metaphors that have been employed within the academic community in relation to the concept of the “platform,” with the aim of deepening our understanding of their implications for the field.

During the last years, many scholars coming from different academic backgrounds employed the platform keyword, with the creations of expressions such platform governance (Gillespie, 2017b; Gorwa, 2019), platform capitalism, and platform economy (Athique and Parthasarathi, 2020; Boyer, 2021; Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Mezzadra et al., 2024; Srnicek, 2017), platform socialism (Muldoon, 2022), platform labor (Van Doorn, 2017), platform welfare (Longo and Maino, 2021), platform party (Gerbaudo, 2019), platform sovereignty (Bratton, 2015), platform law (Kaye, 2019), platform state (Chevallier, 2018), platform urbanism (Barns, 2020; Hodson et al., 2020), platform cooperativism (Grohmann, 2022; Scholz and Schneider 2017), platform delusion (Knee, 2021), and finally the platform society (Van Dijck et al., 2018).

The role played nowadays by the platform keyword seems like that played by the “network” at the beginning of the commercial internet (Comunello and Mulargia, 2023). At the time, the network was seen as a new organizational form besides hierarchical firms and decentralized markets (Apprich 2017; Lovink, 2002; Powell, 1990), but it was also used as an epistemology of the social world (Ampuja and Koivisto, 2014; Castells, 2000; Latour, 2005; Van Dijk, 2006). In that case, the term network was criticized for being too broad and too metaphorical. On the one hand, everything has always been a network: trading systems, telegraphs, feudal societies, and even hierarchies; on the other, there was something specific about this “new” form of organization. Platform studies face a similar challenge, characterized by the risk of either employing the term too broadly (as discussed by Gillespie, 2018) or “reifying the platform” (as noted by Miconi, 2020), thereby transforming it into an overly comprehensive framework. As Marc Steinberg has put it, the “greatest success of platform within our language ecosystem is to have become something of a universal translation device. Almost anything can become a platform, if one merely calls it such” (Steinberg, 2019: 1). However, from a linguistic perspective, setting some kind of (permeable) boundaries is a necessary task for a concept to have some substance and to avoid being considered, like other keywords of the digital discourse such as governance (Offe, 2009), privacy (Solove, 2008), digital labor (Gandini, 2021), and an empty signifier (see Zicman de Barros, 2023; Laclau, 1996).

As a potential answer to this threat, the double task of platform scholars has been, first, to provide an analytical definition of the platform, and second, to create platform categories to distinguish platforms from one another. As for the first task, a recent review of the papers from 2018 to 2021, despite omitting some relevant works, identified 26 different definitions of the platform (Ha et al., 2023). The platform was defined by management scholars as an infrastructure for value creation and capture () and by the software studies tradition as a standard-based system of governance centered on the distribution of interfaces, reprogramability, and modularity (Bratton, 2015; Bogost and Montfort, 2009; Helmond 2015). Nowadays, most researchers agree on what could be called a “minimal definition” of the platform as an intermediary organizational form between two or more sides, providing the necessary infrastructure to enable interactions between different groups (Schüler and Petrik, 2021). Among the several definitions, the functional one given by Thomas Poell, David Nieborg, and José Van Dijk stands out as the attempt to achieve a synthesis between different traditions of platform research. The authors define platforms as

re-programmable digital infrastructures that facilitate and shape personalized interactions among end-users and complementors, organized through the systematic collection, algorithmic processing, monetization, and circulation of data (Poell et al., 2019: 2).

The second task of platform scholars, the creation of platform categories, is evident in different academic fields. For instance, Nick Srnicek (2017) categorized platforms from a shared set of properties into advertising, cloud, industrial, and lean platforms. Annabelle Gawer et al. provided a categorization based on how platforms produce value, dividing them into transactional, innovation, and hybrid platforms. Marc Steinberg (2019) presented a three-folded historical categorization of product-technology, content, and transactional platforms. In urbanism, distinctions were made between four categories of urban platforms, such as online-to-offline producer–consumer intermediation, service provider–customer intermediation, public service intermediation, and nonprofit service intermediation (Caprotti et al., 2022; Chiappini, 2020). Van Dijk et al. (2021) distinguished between infrastructural and sectorial platforms, and even recent exercises to create platform typologies in relation to super-apps and their dynamics of conglomeration—Swiss-Army Knife, family-style, host, hub—can be included in these attempts of categorization (van der Vlist et al., 2024).

In the present paper, I develop an approach that aims to complement existing studies while differing in its methodology and scope. I refrain from defining the platform, and starting from the fact that it is an umbrella concept that maps a topology of references, I examine the primary platform metaphors used in various academic fields. The list of metaphors is not exhaustive, and additional metaphors could be included. I tried to select those that I found most representative of the various traditions within platform research. The identified metaphors may be explicitly constructed by academics, or they may remain implicit within their descriptions, and the scholars cited serve as examples of these traditions, sometimes regardless of their original intent. While this selection is based on my subjective judgment, it is necessary for the purpose of comparing the different metaphors. The identification of these metaphors was primarily conducted through a literature review, starting with Poell et al.'s (2019) reconstruction of platform studies from the traditions of management, political economy, and software studies. To this foundation, I incorporated insights from the fields of economic sociology and urbanism. Additionally, I conducted qualitative interviews (Cristofari, 2023) using the “expert interview” methodology (Bogner et al., 2009; Döringer, 2021), wherein I asked several academics to identify the most suitable metaphors for describing platform operations. Finally, in selecting relevant metaphors, I predominantly relied on a Western-centric perspective, focusing on North American and European studies, so most of them were identified in English-language books and papers. An exception is Steinberg's (2019) studies of Japanese platforms. However, I had to exclude the insights coming from the growing literature on platformization in Asia, South America, and Africa (see for instance Davis and Xiao, 2021; de Kloet et al., 2019; Grimes, 2018; Jia and Winseck, 2018; Lei, 2021; Plantin and de Seta, 2019; Steinberg et al., 2022).

The paper is organized as follows. The first section reconstructs the debate surrounding the term platform as both a metaphor and a keyword. The second section delves into key 20th-century philosophical works on metaphors, providing context for exploring the politics of metaphor construction in platform studies. The third section introduces what might be termed a “platformology”—that is the classification and study of platform metaphors to identify their features and contents—by presenting twenty metaphors of the platform. The final section offers some reflections on the utility of the platform keyword and potential strategies for platform studies to mitigate the risk of reification.

This paper is grounded in the belief that as platformization progresses, examining the production of platform metaphors through the lens of cultural semiotics not only reveals what platforms do but also uncovers the cultural dimensions underlying platform research. By clarifying the use of the platform keyword, I wish to contribute to the ongoing attempt to institutionalize platform studies as an academic field of knowledge.

Platform discourse and platform thinking

It was Tarleton Gillespie who first shifted the attention to the metaphorical use of the term platform. In his article “The Politics of Platforms” (Gillespie, 2010), he identified the semantic territories evoked by the platform metaphor in the computational, the architectural and the political.¹ Gillespie discussed the rise of streaming services arguing that emerging digital companies were trying to work discursively to present their services and their technologies as flat and egalitarian. At the time, the platform was perceived by the public as something new, resulting from the introduction of innovative elements in the media landscape. That attempt, however, constituted a strategy of some corporate entities which, like “Greek sophists,” leveraged language to manipulate their audiences (Crogan, 2010), hiding the amount of labor needed to maintain their infrastructure. Years later, Gillespie revisited the topic of the usage of the platform metaphor, noting that, precisely as a metaphor, the platform highlights some things, but it also downplays aspects that are not captured by it. In particular, the pragmatical mobilization of the platform metaphor had been necessary to hide under the surface the huge amount of labor needed to create and maintain a complex architectonical dimension used to organize, structure, and channel information according to arrangements established by the platform itself (Gillespie, 2017a). As such, Gillespie showed that the metaphor of the platform had to be taken seriously, as it was open to contestation (Krivý, 2021).

However, well before Gillespie's focus on platform discourse, several concepts of the platform had been around for years, predating the emergence of Web 2.0 and platform capitalism. While I am not going to reconstruct here the genealogy of the platform (see Steinberg, 2019), it is important to note that several “platform concepts” were developed with a certain degree of interdependence between the USA, Europe, and Japan. Before the end of the millennium, American managers thought of the platform as the shared logic allowing them to manage what would otherwise be portfolios of unrelated entities (Sawhney, 1998). In Europe, economists had researched the novelties of markets that presented at least two sides—they were multisided—and usually worked with network effects (Rochet and Tirole, 2003). “Platform thinking” emerged as a schema for meaning-making that did not necessarily involved digital infrastructures: products like the Sony Walkman or the Nintendo Game Boy were also considered platforms in their way of functioning (Trabucchi and Buganza, 2023). In Japan, the unique “media-mix” cultural environment gave rise to the platform as a frame to encompass “contents” (Steinberg, 2019) and Toyotist experimentation in the field of automobiles played a considerable role in its development (Steinberg, 2022). In that context Japanese manager Natsuno Takeshi, who is credited for creating the proto-smartphone i-mode, argued that a platform is a business model that rather than producing physical products acts as a mediation mechanism. According to Takeshi, the platform model allows service providers to focus on content creation, while the platform provider focuses on collecting fees, managing the platform, and storing data, creating a circular value chain (Takeshi, 2003a , 2003b).

Retroactively, it can be said that the platform concept found its most effective application only when at least two conditions were met. First, platformization presupposes that very anthropological change constituted by the widespread distribution of reprogramable interfaces in the world population, now amounting to 6.5 billion of smartphones being produced by two companies—Apple and Google—which also owns the relative app stores (De Martin, 2023). Second, a shift took place when the managerial theory of the platform as a centrally controllable multisided market met the new organizational and governmental possibilities opened up by digital tools such as Application Program Interfaces (APIs), giving rise to the three layers of platform thinking: the community, the infrastructure, and the data layer (Choudary, 2015).

At present, platform studies have evolved beyond the console-centric approach of the Platform Studies series by the MIT Press (Bogost and Montfort, 2009; Helmond, 2015) into an academic discipline that encompasses a wide range of subjects, integrating perspectives coming from management, software studies, sociology, and political economy. Jean Burgess has recently defined platform studies

as an umbrella term for holistic approaches to those entities that are understood and represent themselves as digital media platforms. Platform studies concern the technologies, interfaces, and affordances, ownership structures, business models, media, self-representations, and governance of these entities, positioning these elements in a coevolutionary relationship with the platform's diverse cultures of use (Burgess, 2021: 26).

With the emergence of platform studies as a field of research, further considerations can be drawn on the journey of the platform as metaphor and keyword. However, before introducing the various metaphors of the platform, I wish to contextualize the role of metaphors in platform studies.

What does the metaphor do?

This section engages in a brief reconstruction of the debate concerning the epistemological status of metaphor within the philosophical tradition. This exploration serves two purposes. Firstly, it demonstrates that, beyond the modern theory of metaphor and its cognitive turn, the metaphor has been extensively studied primarily as a linguistic phenomenon. Secondly, it challenges the notion that only analytical concepts possess epistemic legitimacy, arguing that the metaphor is indeed a tool for knowledge, albeit one that requires careful handling. This analysis is particularly pertinent given the impact of Tarleton Gillespie's critique of the platform as a metaphor, which might lead to a rejection of metaphorical production in favor of purely analytical knowledge; but metaphors defy strictly analytical explanations.

The term metaphor is derived from the Greek word meta, which signifies “after,” “over,” “across,” and also “changed,” and pherein, which means “to bear, to carry.” This etymological background already illustrates that a metaphor is a heuristic device that transforms the linguistic code, associating fields that are generally considered irreconcilable. The 20th century has seen numerous studies on metaphor, which was a central focus of both linguistic, structuralist thought and the philosophy of science. Roman Jakobson, one of the foremost linguists of the 20th century, pioneered the recognition of metaphor and metonymy as fundamental mechanisms that structure and regulate all linguistic activity (Jakobson, 1971). In the realm of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan famously adapted Jakobson's insights to describe the unconscious, which he asserted is “structured like a language.” According to Lacan, within the language of the unconscious, signifier and signified appear indistinguishable, and words can transfer their energy to others through “displacement”—in the case of metonymy—or through “condensation”—in the case of metaphor (Lacan, 2017).

Other fundamental works on the metaphor in the 20th century are those of philosophers Max Black and Paul Ricœur. Black discussed the role of the metaphor in science, emphasizing the heuristic and cognitive strength of the metaphor for its mode of semantic and conceptual organization, namely the fact that things are reorganized and filtered via metaphorical processes. For Black, the simplest formulation of the metaphor is that of having “two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction” (Black, 1962: 38). Similarly, Paul Ricœur highlighted the creative power of the metaphor, seeing in it a device of semantic innovation, a place of emergence and production of meaning that often creates a surprise effect, what he describes as the métaphore vive (Ricœur, 2004). More recently, linguistic theories have been complemented by cognitivist theory of the metaphor that maintain that it is a phenomenon relating more to thought than to language. For instance, in Lakoff's conceptual theory, metaphorical expressions of a linguistic nature are manifestation of underlying cognitive structures, basic conceptual metaphors with which we organize and categorize the world (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; see Van Boomen, 2014 for a discussion).

For the purpose of this paper, it is interesting to note that the metaphor cannot be studied from a purely analytical and formal point of view. It is what Umberto Eco refers to as the “metaphorical scandal,” namely the fact that every analytical attempt to define and formalize metaphors have consistently failed. The paradox of the metaphor lies in the fact that every definition of it ultimately becomes a tautology (Eco, 1984). However, for the abovementioned authors, this does not mean that metaphor should be understood only as a rhetorical device and relegated to poetry and the arts. On the contrary, as firstly noted by Aristotle in the Rhetoric, the metaphor is an instrument of knowledge: it does not only create analogies between things but also possess cognitive value, revealing aspects of reality. However, as noted by Gillespie when commenting on the platform metaphor serving corporate purposes, it is an instrument of knowledge that paradoxically works by lying. The key point of the metaphor is that it does not convey the literal truth: it is rather a lie that tells the truth.

This implies that to understand metaphors, it is necessary to look at the cultural dimension of the interpreters of metaphors. When the interpreter understands that an expression is not truthful is obliged to interpret it metaphorically, employing a circular rather than a linear methodology (Melandri, 2004). Interpreters are put to work by the metaphor, as they need to refer to a shared cultural dimension of readers which continuously restructures itself—what Umberto Eco calls the “encyclopedia” (Eco, 2007).²

However, during this activity of decoding a metaphor, interpreters also gain two things. First, they understand how the epistemic network of cultural references is structured through family resemblances among different concepts (Hesse, 1974); second, they learn how the construction of metaphors serves certain political agendas. In semiotics, the challenge lies in identifying the “encyclopedic rules” upon which the resolution of this implicature must be based (Eco, 2007; Grice, 1967). In other terms, the challenge is that of understanding what the creator of the metaphor wanted to say without explicitly stating it. The politics of metaphors involves understanding why some metaphors have been constructed to reveal what they aimed at suggesting. In this sense, studying the creation of metaphors shows the difficulty, or even impossibility, of being neutral observers even in the academic context.

Mapping 20 platform metaphors

In the previous section, I tried to show that the platform as a metaphor puts the academic community to work. This is true in two senses. First, academics need to interpret and decode platform metaphors; second, they actively engage in producing and reproducing new metaphors of the platform, creating a recursion of metaphors that might offer something to the platform concept. Consequently, this section aims at comparing the production of metaphors of the digital platform as a specific form of mediation within the academic community, and this comparison seeks to illustrate which features of the platform are highlighted and which are overlooked at different times.

Given the stark heterogeneity of the twenty platform metaphors mobilized in the academic discourse, I propose to divide them in the following four categories, as illustrated by Table 1: (i) metaphors of action; (ii) metaphors of coordination and transaction; (iii) metaphors of control and access; (iv) metaphors of world-building.

Table 1.

Twenty metaphors of the platform used in the academic community.

	Action to be taken	Coordination and transaction	Control and access	World-building
The platform as	Elevated stage Political program	Orchestration mechanism Marketplace Shopping mall Ecosystem	Walled garden Gatekeeper Watermill Factory Vampire Colonialist/imperialist Squid/octopus Möbius strip	Stack Theseus’ ship Lego Catalyst Chimera World
Academic fields	Media studies—management—political economy Software studies—urbanism—economic sociology

The first category—metaphors that signal that an action that must be taken—comprises two metaphors which may seem detached from the platform as an organizational form. However, they are important as they signal that the domain in which platforms operate is politics. The platform as an elevated stage (Gillespie, 2010) is the first metaphor, which allows people to speak and be heard, and which implies the idea of the platform as a political program. The ideas evoked by these metaphors deal with the possibility to speak, and so they are particularly related to the subset of platforms that are social media platforms. In English, this use of expressions such as “deplatforming” (Chricton, 2021)—which differs from “deplatformization” (Van Dijck et al., 2021)—can be still traced nowadays with the meaning of forbidding someone to be heard in public. Similarly, the word “program” relates to the platform both in terms of a plan and a public edit, but also of the underlying programable dimension of software; and Benjamin Bratton has claimed that one of the central novelties of digital platforms is their innovative form of emergent, albeit centralized, planning (Bratton, 2015).

The second category, metaphors of coordination and transaction, comprises four metaphors. The platform as a marketplace (or as forum, or agora) is the central metaphor of the management literature, either directly mobilized or implied by most of its scholars (Evans and Schmalensee, 2016; Gawer, 2014; Hagiu and Wright, 2015). For instance, in a recent economic analysis, digital platforms are compared to the count that saw the origin of European trade take place in the Middle Ages:

once admitted, all participants were on a level playing field, as the count carefully avoided granting any privilege to anyone. The fair locations were fortified, and impartial institutions were put in place to enforce contracts and resolve disputes. […] What the count of Champagne started around 1180 is known today as a platform. (Belleflamme and Peitz, 2021: 10)

While this metaphor highlights that platforms are matchmakers and multi-sided markets, it fails to acknowledge that it is a specific system of governance of groups that relies on software and needs an endless labor of curation, moderation and regulation to keep running (Poell et al., 2022). On the opposite side of the political spectrum there is the metaphor of the platform as a shopping mall:

Don’t think of the platform as the landlord who owns a rental home. Think of it as the owner of a shopping mall who invests in property in order to facilitate productive activity. (Sadowski, 2020: 7)

This metaphor also emphasizes this multi-sided aspect of platforms, with stores renting space and customers attracted to the mall, with the addition that the rent-seeking dimension of this business model is made explicit. However, it seems rather static, as it downplays the evolutionary nature of platforms, and it neglects to account for the fact that established corporate platforms are always actively working to maintain their oligopoly against the overthrow of other platforms (Thomas et al., 2021). One additional metaphor within this conceptual framework, used by economic sociologists, is the platform as an orchestration mechanism (Casilli, 2019; Langlois and Elmer, 2019; Rachlitz, 2023), wherein various actors are brought together. To use a cybernetic vocabulary, this metaphor elucidates that the central function of the platform is to maintain a homeostatic equilibrium between at least two distinct groups, such as app developers (complementors) and app users. Orchestration involves not only coordinating actors from different spheres but also attending to and managing relationships among the complementors. For instance, the development of software developer kits is undertaken to provide complementors with access to specific technological resources, enabling the successful launch of complementary products and addressing the intricacies of the settings. Consequently, this metaphor underscores the platform's concerted efforts in sustaining coordination and assuming a political role in mediating between groups.

A subsequent metaphor in the coordination category is the platform as an ecosystem. This metaphor holds significant relevance, as it is widely embraced by institutional and business entities. It seems to me to be the most spread across the academic community (Krivý, 2023; van der Vlist, 2023). However, in contrast to the self-organized and emergent nature of biological ecosystems, platform ecosystems are intentionally designed as centralized marketplaces, where affordances can be coordinated and modified over time through a governance structure implemented by the platforms themselves. This distinction is emphasized by infrastructure scholars, who assert that platform infrastructures differ from traditional telecom infrastructures because they not only construct large technical systems, but they also establish entire interactional ecosystems (Plantin et al., 2018).

The third thematic category, focusing on control and access, encompasses nine metaphors. Among these, the a theoretical object designed to demonstrate (Andrejevic, 2007; Lovink, 2022) and the a theoretical object designed to demonstrate (Bonini and Gandini, 2019; Knapstad, 2023) underscore exclusionary logic and digital enclosure. The platform serves as a confined space for human social interaction, artificially demarcating an inside and outside to maximize profit from resources that could otherwise be accessible in a nonrivalrous form. However, the walled garden metaphor can be misleading regarding information flows, as the platform's objective is to regulate rather than halt these flows.

Moreover, certain metaphors derived from the political economy literature have shifted their focus toward themes such as value extraction, rent seeking, and transformation. The platform as a factory (Altenried, 2022) illustrates the continuity with earlier models of organizing the production process and living labor. Platformization, in this context, does not signify the demise of the factory but rather its spatial reconfiguration: much like factories, platforms persist as apparatuses for organizing labor, machinery, and infrastructure across space and time. Other metaphors are rooted in the control of means of production and capitalist expansion usually within the Marxist framework. An example is the platform as colonialist/imperialist, which highlights the appropriation of the territory of human experience via unprecedented technologies (Couldry and Mejias, 2018; Jin, 2015; Zuboff, 2019) or their exploitative role in the Global South (Athique and Parthasarathi, 2020; Seto, 2024). The concept of extraction is central to the metaphor of the platform as a vampire (Muldoon, 2022). In this metaphor, the platform extends the logic of surplus value extraction from workers, as posited by Marx, to encompass the behavioral value (Zuboff, 2019) of all groups within its marketplace, including complementors. In this sense, what the management literature calls “platform leaders” have been characterized as a “vectorialist class” which is a departure from Fordist capitalism (Wark, 2019), from being positioned at a higher level of abstraction (Ström, 2022). In the debate about techno-feudalism, Jodi Dean suggested that even the metaphor of the platform as a water mill can be reductive, as

platforms are doubly extractive. Unlike the water mill, peasants had no choice but to use, platforms not only position themselves so that their use is basically necessary (like banks, credit cards, phones, and roads) but that their use generates data for their owners. Users not only pay for the service but the platform collects the data generated by the use of the service. The cloud platform extracts rents and data, like land squared. (Dean, 2020)

Similarly, it was proposed the metaphor of the a theoretical object designed to demonstrate, a theoretical object designed to demonstrate mathematical ideas about curvature, rotation, and surface area that was meant at resisting being defined on either the inside or outside of the loop (Watkins and Star, 2018). In this sense, the essence of the platform activity is the co-optation of assets that cannot be described as either internal or external to the firm, something that has been also labeled as a process of “assetization” (Birch and Muniesa, 2020; Chicchi et al., 2022). It is noteworthy that, despite using different terminology, management scholars and Marxist political economists concur on the descriptive aspect of the platform business model, as they both acknowledge that it is an infrastructure that extracts value from various groups (McIntyre et al., 2021). The divergence arises in their normative assessments: while the former view it as a novel and viable business model, the latter perceive it as an exacerbation of unacceptable capitalist practices. Notwithstanding the metaphors of extraction, it is crucial to recognize that value is also generated for users, and only a portion of this value is retained.

Finally, the category of control and access contains some metaphors coming from the animal world such as the platform as a squid, which has been deployed about social media platforms (Helmond et al., 2019; Steinberg, 2019), but it can easily be extended to refer to any complementor that builds services on them. In this metaphorical framework, the evolving APIs function akin to the tentacles of a squid, allowing service producers to be ensnared while maintaining their separation and algorithmic governance (Stark and Pais, 2020), each tentacle managing a distinct aspect.

The concluding category, metaphors of world-building, delves into discussions surrounding change, self-reproduction, and recombination, a discourse predominantly found in the realm of software studies. Digital platforms exhibit a complex structure comprised of multiple layers characterized by recursive features, elucidated by metaphors such as the platform as a stack and platform as Theseus’ ship (Bratton, 2015). The latter metaphor aligns with the concept of the platform as Lego (Helmond, 2023), where the reprogramability and modularity of software enable digital platforms to maintain a constant essence while undergoing continuous transformation. In fact, the unified perspective on platform architecture underscores the existence of three key elements: core components with low variability, complementary components with high variability, and interfaces facilitating modularity between the core and complementary components (Baldwin and Woodward, 2008). All these metaphors focus on the technical aspects but make no reference to the dimension of political coordination and value extraction mentioned above. Similarly, the metaphor of the platform as a chimera (Vallas and Schor, 2020) highlights the recombination of various attributes and properties. Drawing inspiration from mythical creatures that amalgamate features from numerous animals, this metaphor underscores how platform features, akin to diverse organizational forms, are perceived as a blend of distinct elements. Moreover, the conceptualization of the platform as a catalyst (Evans, 2011) encapsulates the essence of the platform business model that facilitates and accelerates the creation of value within its ecosystem. This metaphor underscores the active role played by platforms in stimulating and fostering value generation across diverse participants within the platform environment.

The last metaphor that can be found is that of the platform as a world (Balestrieri, 2021; Bratton, 2015; Pieranni, 2020; Steinberg, 2019; Muldoon, 2022).³ This metaphor is extremely broad, and it needs to be understood as a reference to a cybernetic world which is not “found” in nature but rather built by humans. Drawing parallels with the dynamics observed in video games (Chia et al., 2020) and the patterns of gamification, users engage in attempts to hack the platform(s), initiating a process wherein it undergoes reprograming to regulate emergent patterns. This metaphor encapsulates the platform's multifaceted nature, and it also highlights that Asian platforms such as WeChat have become so embedded in the everyday lives of users, with all kinds of apps running inside their ecosystem, that they almost equate to the internet tout court. The metaphor of the platform-world shows that an increasing degree of time in the life of users and producers is spent within these systems.

What to do with the term “platform”?

The exploration into the evolution and contested meanings of the platform metaphor within academic discourse reveals a dynamic landscape shaped by various conceptual lenses. Originating with Tarleton Gillespie's work, the platform metaphor has traversed more than a decade of scholarly discussion. My “platformology,” by encompassing a diverse array of metaphors used in platform studies, underscores the persistent contestation and divergence in the academic understanding of the term platform. Scholars from different fields construct very different metaphors: management scholars highlight the market-like and transactional aspect of platforms; political economists the elements of extraction and exploitation and the asymmetry of power inside the platform; economic sociologists the new hybrid means of economic coordination of platform infrastructures; software studies scholars the importance of recombinatory technical standards.

However, even if the operations of platforms are manyfold and they differ considerably, the four categories of platform metaphors show that there are some important commonalities. First, platforms need to create a market allowing groups to interact and transact, attracting users and complementors. Second, this market needs to be centrally controlled and managed, and therefore platforms need to act, making use of their higher positioning toward the groups of their ecosystem via curation, moderation and changes in the infrastructure. Third, this governmental activity is necessary to control and direction the access and prevent users from exiting the platform to sustain the business model. Finally, this activity is carried out thanks to a reprogramable computational infrastructure, a “world” with specific rules and standards that can be changed over time. As such, upon revisiting the definition of a platform provided by Poell et al. (2019) quoted above, it becomes evident that the comparison facilitated by the metaphors encompasses all its dimensions: multisidedness, infrastructural role, utilization of data, reprogramability, and the active process of value creation and extraction. In a field characterized by the constant evolution of the forms of platform mediation, metaphors serve as an indispensable conduit for capturing and elucidating change. They are the way in which language can grasp sociotechnical changes, aligning with Aristotle's assertion that they reveal “things in a state of activity” (Eco, 1984).

I would like to conclude by making some consideration relating to the usefulness of the platform keyword and the upcoming challenges of platform studies. From a linguistic point of view the platform is an umbrella term open to being used with different meanings in different contexts. If that makes it close to being an “empty signifier,” one should remember that even empty signifiers can play a useful political role (Laclau, 1996). Like the “network” keyword, the platform can be part of a “disposable theory” that can be rearranged according to the analytical task at hand (Stalder, 2006). This is particularly important because platforms are not suited to conventional research programs, and flexibility is necessary to allow to study “organizational forms that are highly technical, and technical forms that provide extraordinary organizational complexity to emerge” (Bratton, 2015: 42). Overall, the platform term can prove useful in enunciative fields of conventional nature (Zolo, 1989) in enabling interdisciplinary research, for otherwise there would be a variety of different terms for referring to similar concepts. The platform keyword can be useful identifying, empirically and theoretically, a unifying trend across the many domains it covers, allowing many different disciplines to communicate in a continuous negotiation of meaning.

In a similar sense, building on a field of research well-aware of the power of metaphors such as cybernetic social theory (Geoghegan, 2023) and its “ontology of becoming” (Pickering, 2009), the platform keyword can be interpreted as a mechanism of “reduction of complexity.” For the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, studying social processes relating to the complexity of the contemporary global society requires a recursive series of abstractions and implies the primacy of theoretical, abstract knowledge (Luhmann, 2012).⁴ The platform can be considered one of such abstractions, in a way similarly to other very broad concepts such as the “state” and the “market”—and it is precisely these two forms of organization that are affected by platformization, as the spread of centrally controlled markets combine centralized state planning with decentralized economic coordination while allowing to experiment on citizens and users. In this sense, what the platform does is to allow what the French philosopher of technique Bernard Stiegler has called the “computational synchronization of the masses through the aggregation of their traces” (Stiegler, 2022). Platforms function as “engines of order” (Rieder, 2020) in the coordination of social action, and if the computer is the “universal machine,” the platform can be interpreted as universal form of organization: platforming a social dynamic can bring the evolutionary advantage—for good or for bad—of saving time in the life of users.⁵ In this sense, platformization embodies what I call the organizational consequences of computation, synchronizing people, capital and services in space and time.

What to do, then, with the term platform? From a sociological point of view, the platform should be understood as an abstract organizational and institutional form in historical discontinuity with the forms of the past such as hierarchies, markets, and networks (Bratton, 2015; Cristofari, 2023; Lehdonvirta, 2022; Rachlitz, 2023; Stark and Pais, 2020; Vallas and Schor, 2020; Van Doorn, 2020). Any organization, in its abstract form, has the potential to be structured as a platform. By becoming-platform, an organization can enhance its legibility of users, who are now situated within a cybernetic system, and benefit from algorithmic governmentality (Rouvroy and Stiegler, 2016) by exerting control over the infrastructure. Moreover, like the need to distinguish between firms and corporations (Robé, 2020), it is important to differentiate the “platform layer” from the actual firm, avoiding any conflation of the two: platforms are not firms, though firms can structure themselves as platforms. This separation between firm and platform allows for the possibility of public and state-controlled platforms that connect citizens with public institutions, as highlighted by the debate on digital identification systems and the concept of the “platform state” (Alauzen, 2019; Chevallier, 2018; Cordella and Paletti 2019; Cristofari, 2022; O’Reilly, 2011). From a more legal perspective, platforms can be instead understood as quasi-autonomous legal orders (Bassan, 2021; Cohen, 2019), administrative authorities issuing self-enforcing authorizations that regulate behaviors via their infrastructure. As these are powers normally vested in public authorities (Pollicino, 2021), the complex activity of balancing rights and interests of users and complementors carried out by private platformed companies raises serious concerns about power asymmetries and respect of fundamental rights.

In conclusion, as platform studies grow as field, platform scholars should be aware of some aspects related to the use of the platform keyword. First, this paper has tried to show that the object of investigation of platform studies is hard to grasp as an entity,⁶ because the platform is a relational concept that presents malleable and evolving boundaries. Second, academics, in their roles as both producers and interpreters of platform metaphors, are tasked with uncovering the “encyclopedic rules” necessary to decode these metaphors—an ongoing challenge that demands careful attention from platform scholars. This underscores the importance of specifying, from time to time, the type of platform under discussion in academic discourse. Third, similar to the concept of the “network” (Ampuja and Koivisto, 2014), scholars must also recognize that the platform keyword is not neutral; it can play a significant role in legitimizing particular political agendas, necessitating a critical awareness of its implications within research and discourse.

Finally, precisely because the term platform is prone to be used so broadly, one of the challenges for platform studies in the coming years will be how to avoid turning the concept of the platform into an all-encompassing framework. Instead, it is crucial to maintain a nuanced and context-specific approach, and two ongoing research trends are pointing in the right direction. The first trend, regionalization, emphasizes the importance of considering the geographical origin of platform research. Analyses of platforms in Brazil, China, and India, for instance, are likely to yield different outcomes compared to those conducted in Western contexts due to varying socioeconomic, political, and cultural landscapes (Steinberg and Li, 2017). This regional focus can uncover unique platform dynamics, regulatory environments, and user behaviors that might be overlooked in more generalized studies. Similarly, the second trend, sectorization, highlights the need to differentiate platform research according to the specific sectors in which platforms operate. Platforms in healthcare, education, transportation, for example, each have distinct characteristics, challenges, and implications (Van Dijck et al., 2018). By tailoring the platform keyword to the analytical task at hand, researchers can more accurately capture the sector-specific dynamics and impacts of platformization. This approach ensures that the theoretical framework remains relevant and precise, preventing the dilution of the platform concept. By embracing these trends, platform studies can continue to evolve in a way that respects the diversity and specificity of platforms across different regions and sectors. This will not only enrich the academic discourse but also provide more actionable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and stakeholders involved in the platform economy.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

I thank Geert Lovink for supporting my initial idea of studying platforms through metaphors. I also thank Alberto Micheletto for his help and inputs on the philosophical literature on the metaphor, Davide Beraldo for his valuable comments and the semioticians Nicola Zengiaro and Marco Giacomazzi for our conversations. I thank the anonymous reviewers, and especially reviewer 1, for their extremely valuable comments that I integrated in the final text. Finally, thanks to Jordi Viader Guerrero, Valeria Ferrari, Alexandra Giannopoulou, Tommaso Campagna, Marco Dal Lago, and Elena Consiglio for their support and advises.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The project was sponsored by the MUR and the EU Commission, “Next Generation EU” PRJ-1391 "EquAl: Equitable Algorithms, Promoting Fairness and Countering Algorithmic Discrimination Through Norms and Technologies". The author also received funding from Global Digital Culture, Amsterdam, (Grant No. R.2026.001803).

ORCID iD

Gianmarco Cristofari

Notes

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Understanding the “platform” keyword: An inquiry on the contested use of metaphors in platform studies

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Platform discourse and platform thinking

What does the metaphor do?

Mapping 20 platform metaphors

What to do with the term “platform”?

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

References