[Air-L] Call For ICA 2023 Panelists: Platforms, Power and a Theory of Friction

[Popiel, Pawel]

Hi All,

I’m co-organizing a panel for ICA 2023 that positions the removal and/or creation of friction through policy, design and business practices, as an orienting lens to understand platform capitalism and platform power. We are looking for two more panelists and are particularly interested in scholars who study labor surveillance, datafication, climate change and smart cities.

Once you’ve read the abstract below, if you are interested, please email Pawel Popiel (ppopiel at asc.upenn.edu<mailto:ppopiel at asc.upenn.edu>) and Krishnan Vasudevan (kvasu at umd.edu<mailto:kvasu at umd.edu>) with a brief description of your paper and how your work would contribute to the understanding of friction.

Abstract

Technology platform companies, from Amazon to Uber, require the constant flow of user data to maximize profits and fuel their growth. The dependency of their business models on these uninterrupted data flows creates incentives for platform companies to remove any and all frictions that impede their accumulation of capital, including by facilitating user data surrender and obscuring data collection practices through user-friendly design and opposing policies that may regulate or disrupt these data flows. Communication scholars have begun to explore how technology platforms seek to maintain fluid marketplaces through such "frictionless" practices and strategies. For example, Popiel & Sang (2021) examined how platform companies lobby for "frictionless regulations" like public-private partnerships that naturalize platform business models, while privileging their business considerations over democratic values. Vasudevan (2020) examined how platforms employ "frictionless design" to addict end-users to platforms by deploying deceptive interactive features. In this panel, we build upon recent scholarship about friction and frictionless practices employed by technology platforms by examining the construct in the context of labor surveillance, datafication, platform regulation, and climate change. By situating “friction” within a more expansive theoretical context, this panel will offer scholars an adaptable, orienting construct for examining platform power. More broadly, this panel will provide scholars a meaningful lens through which to understand how platform capitalism in the current epoch seeks to erode socio-technical and political frictions that are crucial to a functioning democracy.


​Pawel Popiel, PhD
George Gerbner Postdoctoral Fellow
Annenberg School for Communication
University of Pennsylvania
https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/pawel-popiel
https://pawelpopiel.com/