The rapid growth of platforms has consequences for the ways in which media and culture are produced and consumed, and how they are used to connect and divide. From everyday experience to political, economic and commercial questions, examining platform cultures has become essential for media and cultural studies, internet studies, and cultural sociology.
The Yorkshire Platform Culture Networks is a joint initiative by colleagues in sociology and media and communications at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, York and Huddersfield, founded by David Beer, David Hesmondhalgh, Matt Hills, Catherine Johnson, Helen Kennedy and Cornel Sandvoss. We aim to explore and address the challenges arising from the rapid growth of platforms by fostering collaborations, dialogue and discussions on the present and future of platform cultures and by focusing on the cultural as much as the technological.
The University of Huddersfield hosted the inaugural symposium and the second, which focused on the relationship between platform cultures and race, gender and sexuality. Below are the scholars who spoke at our first two events.
Aymar Jean Christian (Northwestern University)
Platforming Intersectionality
Francesca Sobande (Cardiff University)
Whose platforms?: Considering the relationship between platforms, authorship, audience, and agency.
Nancy Baym (Microsoft Research)
The Relational Affordance of Platforms
Lucasz Szulc, The University of Sheffield
Gender Wars, Social Media and Democracy: Towards Cross-Platform and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Rikke Amundsen, King’s College London
The role of (dis)trust in sexting as digitally mediated intimacy work
Sally Osei-Appiah, University of Leeds
Exploring social media use among women politicians: evidence from Ghana and Nigeria