Mikael Gustavsson, Doctoral Student in Informatics at the Department of Applied Information Technology, will defend his doctoral thesis named "Platformization: Digital Materiality at the Limits of Discourse".
The digital platform has emerged as a dominant economic and organizational model in the discourse on society's digital transformation, often explained by theories of matchmaking, externalities and network effects. Addressing the fluid and versatile nature of digital platforms, this thesis theorises the digital materiality of digital artefacts alongside the discursive work required to make them intelligible.
By applying a platform-centric perspective the thesis contributes to research on digital platforms by building on and developing the concept of platformization: An idea of the digital platform as a creation with a past, present, and potential future, which can take on different forms and functions as it becomes entangled in, and thus tries to become a self-evident component of, various discursive systems. An idea with a strong emphasis on the continuous becoming of a platform.