Navigating platform power
Agency and resistance in digital spaces
Will be published approx. on 27. October 2026
Book
Hardback
360 pages
978-1-5261-9031-4 (ISBN)
Description
Digital platforms are reshaping exploitation and liberation. And yet, we know too little of how the political agency of multiple social groups changes at the junctures of online and offline spaces: the edited book Political Agency within and of Platform Societies fills this gap. The book's introductory theoretical framework elaborates on how different digital actors move social relations between two opposites that can chain or unchain the possibilities of transformative political agency. The 18 chapters expand the framework through a dialogue among multiple theoretical approaches, including feminism, Marxism, and post-structuralism. The authors draw on relevant empirical examples exploring policy-making, party politics, civil society organisation and social movements. In summary, the volume provides a fresh cross-disciplinary perspective on the politics of digitalisation. By doing so, the book advances knowledge on the barriers to overcome and the conditions to facilitate imaginaries and practices of liberation in the transnational public sphere. -- .
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Manchester
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
17 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-5261-9031-4 (9781526190314)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Dr Marco Guglielmo Royal Holloway University of London
Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs, KCL,
Professor Ben O'Loughlin, Royal Holloway, University of London -- .
Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs, KCL,
Professor Ben O'Loughlin, Royal Holloway, University of London -- .
Content
Introduction - Professor Ben O'Loughlin,Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs, Dr Kat Gupta and Dr Marco Guglielmo
Part I: Chaining Political Agency
1. Algorithmic Agency: The Accelerated Techno-Mediation of Cultural Conflicts - Dr Mikael Andehn
2. A matter of time: Political Agency and Temporal Precarity in Platform Societies - Dr Ilona Steiler and Dr Lorena Ramirez Hincapie
3. Digital Ideology and Material Exploitation of Labour and the Environment - Dr Giorgio Pirina
4. The Illusion of Emancipation and the Limits of Strategic Narratives: Climate Change, Agency and the Promise of Technological Salvation - Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs
5. Political Parties: Empowering the People or Amassing Power in the Digital Age? - Dr Ramon Villaplana Jimenez, Prof Giulia Sandri and Dr Adrian Megias Collado
6. Exploitable Agency: Feedback Mechanisms as a Management Technique in Platform Work - Hugh Hammond
7. Digital Media and the Struggles over Norm Contestation to Silence LGBTQ+ Communities - Jonathan Pettifer
Part 2: Unchaining Political Agency
8. Progressive Politics as a Digital Common: The Organisation of Disruptive Agency - Dr Bradley Ward and Dr Melany Cruz
9. Platforms, policy and power in the imagined futures of digital public spaces - Dr Naomi Jacobs and Dr Louise Mullagh
10. Public Inquiries and Digital Platforms: Spaces of Resistance or Continued Containment - Nathan Critch and D'arcy Ritchie
11. The Digital Transformation of Political Parties and Political Agency: bottom up activism vs. hyperleaderships - Dr Jasmin Fitzpatrick and Professor Oscar Barbera
12. Embubbled on Platforms? How young people become politicised on social media - Scott Downham
13. Social Value First: Digital Platforms for a New Economy of the Commons - Gabiele Masci, Dr Lavinia Pastore and Professor Luigi Corvo
14. Digital Platforms as Third Spaces of Gender Resistance - Antonia Alecu
15. Visibility as Vulnerability? Conceiving Solutions to Feminist Harms in the Online Global Political Sphere - Rachel Brock
Part 3: The Routes towards Emancipation within and of Platform Societies
16. El Remiendo, Recuperation, Reparation - Dr Helen Thornham and Dr Edgar Gomez-Cruz
17. On Platform Hegemony and Resistance: The Metapolitics of Digital Platforms - Dr Alex Williams
18. Commonify platforms: The Multiplicity of Digital Subjects and Practices of Resistance towards Emancipation - Professor Phoebe Moore, Dr Marco Guglielmo, Professor Peter Bloom
Conclusions - Dr Kat Gupta, Professor Ben O'Loughlin, Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs and Dr Marco Guglielmo -- .
Part I: Chaining Political Agency
1. Algorithmic Agency: The Accelerated Techno-Mediation of Cultural Conflicts - Dr Mikael Andehn
2. A matter of time: Political Agency and Temporal Precarity in Platform Societies - Dr Ilona Steiler and Dr Lorena Ramirez Hincapie
3. Digital Ideology and Material Exploitation of Labour and the Environment - Dr Giorgio Pirina
4. The Illusion of Emancipation and the Limits of Strategic Narratives: Climate Change, Agency and the Promise of Technological Salvation - Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs
5. Political Parties: Empowering the People or Amassing Power in the Digital Age? - Dr Ramon Villaplana Jimenez, Prof Giulia Sandri and Dr Adrian Megias Collado
6. Exploitable Agency: Feedback Mechanisms as a Management Technique in Platform Work - Hugh Hammond
7. Digital Media and the Struggles over Norm Contestation to Silence LGBTQ+ Communities - Jonathan Pettifer
Part 2: Unchaining Political Agency
8. Progressive Politics as a Digital Common: The Organisation of Disruptive Agency - Dr Bradley Ward and Dr Melany Cruz
9. Platforms, policy and power in the imagined futures of digital public spaces - Dr Naomi Jacobs and Dr Louise Mullagh
10. Public Inquiries and Digital Platforms: Spaces of Resistance or Continued Containment - Nathan Critch and D'arcy Ritchie
11. The Digital Transformation of Political Parties and Political Agency: bottom up activism vs. hyperleaderships - Dr Jasmin Fitzpatrick and Professor Oscar Barbera
12. Embubbled on Platforms? How young people become politicised on social media - Scott Downham
13. Social Value First: Digital Platforms for a New Economy of the Commons - Gabiele Masci, Dr Lavinia Pastore and Professor Luigi Corvo
14. Digital Platforms as Third Spaces of Gender Resistance - Antonia Alecu
15. Visibility as Vulnerability? Conceiving Solutions to Feminist Harms in the Online Global Political Sphere - Rachel Brock
Part 3: The Routes towards Emancipation within and of Platform Societies
16. El Remiendo, Recuperation, Reparation - Dr Helen Thornham and Dr Edgar Gomez-Cruz
17. On Platform Hegemony and Resistance: The Metapolitics of Digital Platforms - Dr Alex Williams
18. Commonify platforms: The Multiplicity of Digital Subjects and Practices of Resistance towards Emancipation - Professor Phoebe Moore, Dr Marco Guglielmo, Professor Peter Bloom
Conclusions - Dr Kat Gupta, Professor Ben O'Loughlin, Dr Pauline Sophie Heinrichs and Dr Marco Guglielmo -- .