Digital Platforms - Power, Politics and Resistance London School of Economics and Political Science

Overview

Key facts

This platformisation of society generates extensive social damage, as witnessed in the past few years by dramatic episodes of disinformation and media manipulation, algorithmic amplification of hate, and massive data breaches. Around the world citizens, politicians, and activists are holding platforms to account and demanding a change to the concentration of power in digital platforms; these demands are based in the view that platform power is at the centre of a crisis of democracy, and a crisis in the individual and collective ability to communicate and make sense of the world.

London School of Economics and Political Science's Digital Platforms - Power, Politics and Resistance course begins with these received crises but looks both forwards and backwards, to understand how we got here and where we are going. Through this course, you will gain access to research-led lectures and the latest scholarship to properly understand how digital platforms work and the roles they play in society. You will apply this knowledge to case studies to understand how platforms are shaped and where citizens might intervene in their governance. You will engage in debates to think about how to critically engage with technological power and to mitigate the social harms of platforms.