We know that platforms are increasingly integral to at least a small part of almost everything almost everybody does almost everywhere, including many parts of political communication processes, from the production of content, over its distribution, to its consumption, to the actions that follows next. Simply put, if we don’t study platforms, we are studying the past, not the present and future of political communication. Our field brings much to this with its emphasis on both short-term individual-level attitudinal and behavioral effects and the study of longer-term institutional implications. To pursue these research opportunities we have to (1) handle challenges of methods and access to data, (2) the fact that political communication is a small part of very, very large platforms, and (3) get beyond our comfort zone and read more scholarship from outside political communication.

1. THE RISE OF
PLATFORMS
Findings, questions, opportunities, and
challenges for political communication research
RASMUS KLEIS NIELSEN
ICA Prague 2018 (#ICA18, #ica_pol)

2. Platforms: Large technology companies that—
 have developed and maintain digital platforms
that enable interaction between at least two
different kinds of actors
 who in the process come to host public
information, organize access to it, create new
formats for it, and control data about it
 and who thereby influence incentive
structures around investment in public
communication (including by news media,
political campaigns, and social movements)

3. OPPORTUNITIES AND
CHALLENGES

4. Opportunities
for political
communication
research?
Examine short-term individual-
level attitudinal and behavioural
effects
Don’t forget long-term
institutional-level structural
changes
What would Lazarsfeld do?

5. What would Lazarsfeld do? Everything! (and ideally everywhere)
From Lazarsfeld (1948) “Communication Research and the Social Psychologist”,
reproduced from Katz (2001) “Lazarsfeld’s Map of Media Effects”.

6. Challenges
for political
communicati
on research?
Methods and access to data
Political communication is a
small part of very, very large
platforms
Getting beyond our comfort
zone – let’s read some more
books from outside #polcom!

7. Some reading recommendations
A few (non-exhaustive!) reading recommendations for political communication scholars interested in examples of how other communications researchers have approached the
study of platforms
Ananny, Mike, and Kate Crawford. 2016. “Seeing without Knowing: Limitations of the Transparency Ideal and Its Application to Algorithmic Accountability.” New Media &
Society, December. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816676645.
Bell, Emily J., Taylor Owen, Peter D. Brown, Codi Hauka, and Nushin Rashidian. 2017. “The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Reengineered Journalism.”
https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:15dv41ns27.
Caplan, Robyn and danah boyd. 2018. “Isomorphism through algorithms: Institutional dependencies in the case of Facebook”. Big Data & Society.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951718757253
Chadwick, Andrew. 2018 The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dijck, José van. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Gillespie Tarleton. 2017. “Governance of and by platforms.” In SAGE Handbook of Social Media, edited by Jean Burgess, Thomas Poell, and Alice Marwick.
Introna, Lucas D., and Helen Nissenbaum. 2000. “Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters.” The Information Society 16 (3): 169.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01972240050133634.
Miller, Daniel, Elisabetta Costa, Nell Haynes, Razvan Nicolescu, and Jolynna Sinanan. 2016. How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press.
Moazed, Alex, and Johnson Nicholas L. 2016. Modern Monopolies. New York, N.Y: St. Martin’s Press.
Napoli, Philip M. 2014. “Automated Media: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Algorithmic Media Production and Consumption.” Communication Theory 24 (3): 340–60.
https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12039.
Noble, Safiya Umoja. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: Data Discrimination in the Age of Google. New York: New York University Press.
Parker, Geoffrey, Marshall Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary. 2016. Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy. New York: WWNorton
and Company.
Plantin, Jean-Christophe, Carl Lagoze, Paul N. Edwards, and Christian Sandvig. 2016. “Infrastructure Studies Meet Platform Studies in the Age of Google and Facebook.” New
Media & Society, August, 1461444816661553. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553.