Join the Internet Governance as we host an online book talk with London School of Economics Professor Robin Mansell to discuss her new book “Advanced Introduction to Platform Economics” (Edward Elgar 2020).

Artificial intelligence-enabled digital platforms collect and process data from and about users. These companies are largely self-regulating in Western countries. How do economic theories explain the rise of a very few dominant platforms? Mansell and Steinmueller compare and contrast neoclassical, institutional and critical political economy explanations. They show how these perspectives can lead to contrasting claims about platform benefits and harms. Uneven power relationships between platform operators and their users are treated differently in these economic traditions. Sometimes leading to advocacy for regulation or for public provision of digital services. Sometimes indicating restraint and precaution. The authors challenge the reader to think beyond the inevitability of platform dominance to create new visions of how platforms might operate in the future.

This cutting edge book introduces the origins and consequences of digital platforms, examining how artificial intelligence-enabled digital platforms collect and process data from and about users by providing social media and e-commerce services. Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller compare and contrast neoclassical, institutional and critical political economy approaches. They show how uneven power relationships between platform operators and their users are analysed in different economic traditions.

Key features include:

analysis of economic and public values
provides a foundation for platform regulation
examines the impacts of platforms on the media industry
challenges claims of the inevitability of platform dominance
discusses key challenges, including: artificial intelligence, data sharing and competition in the digital economy.

This concise book will be indispensable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of media and communication studies, innovation studies and economics, particularly those focusing on platform economics.

Dr. Mansell is Professor of New Media and the Internet in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has training in several social science disciplines including psychology, social psychology, politics and economics and is a strong advocate of interdisciplinary research when it builds on the strengths of disciplinary inquiry.

She was recipient of the C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy 2020 (ICA Communication Law & Policy and Philosophy, Theory and Critique Divisions). Her research and teaching focus on media and communications regulation and policy, internet governance, privacy and surveillance, digital platforms, socio-technical features of data and information systems, and the social, political and economic impacts of innovation in digital networks and applications. Her current research addresses the political economy of ‘platformisation’ and ‘datafication’ and its consequences for society as well as the challenges of designing and implementing new regulatory norms, rules and processes through institutions in diverse contexts around the world.

She is Board member and secretary of TPRC (Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy, Washington DC), Chair of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Clearinghouse for Public Statements, having served as IAMCR President 2004-08, member Scientific Advisory Council LIRNEAsia, Sri Lanka, and Standing Selection Committee member Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) Canada. She serves as Trustee of the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund and was Trustee of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex 1999-2009. She has been involved in many aspects of LSE life serving as Head of the Department of Media and Communications 2006-09 and 2017-18 and as LSE interim Deputy Director and Provost 2015-16 and Academic Governor 2005-10.

Internet Gov Lab Virtual Roundtable: Robin Mansell on Platform Economics