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

*“Call For ICA 2023 Panelists: Platforms, Power and a Theory of Friction***

Pawel Popiel, (ppopiel /at/ asc.upenn.edu) <mailto:(ppopiel /at/ asc.upenn.edu)>

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.”


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