Critical Perspectives on Digital Platform Ecosystems: Governance, Influence, and Consequences

Editors

• Hemant Bhargava, University of California, Davis
• Andreas König, University of Passau
• Jan Krämer, University of Passau
• Chayanin Wipusanawan, University of Passau

Description

One of the central features of the contemporary digital economy is the growing importance of digital platforms that enable, facilitate, govern, and increasingly mediate exchanges and interactions among participants who affiliate with the platform. Digital platform ecosystems, comprising platform owners, complementors, users, and a broader network of partners and institutions, have become a dominant architecture for value creation in the global economy. They influence organizational strategies, reshape industries and markets, and generate far-reaching social and political implications.

While platform ecosystems can foster novel forms of innovation, coordination, and entrepreneurial opportunity, their concentrated influence also raises critical questions regarding their powerful, and sometimes problematic, effects on societal processes and structures that extend beyond business and economic outcomes. As platform-mediated activities now govern substantial parts of how individuals work, communicate, access information, and participate in public debate, it is increasingly important to examine how these ecosystems are designed, governed, and regulated, and how such governance arrangements shape societal outcomes.

This influence is particularly visible in evolving labor arrangements, the organization and boundaries of online speech and content moderation, and the protection of vulnerable users, including youth safety and digital well-being. Related concerns include issues of fairness and transparency, market power and competitive dynamics, data practices and privacy, the distribution of risks and benefits across stakeholder groups, and the interaction of platform governance with public policy.

This special issue aims to provide a scholarly forum for addressing critical questions on digital platform ecosystems, considering both their enabling potential and their societal risks. We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions, employing quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches, from the full breadth of the information systems field and related disciplines.

Potential topics

• Platform Governance and Ecosystem Orchestration: Governance mechanisms, rule-setting, boundary resources, and the allocation of decision rights across platform owners, complementors, and users; centralized, decentralized, and hybrid governance models.
• Strategic Conduct, Market Power, and Competitive Dynamics: Strategic positioning, platform envelopment, self-preferencing, lock-in, multi-homing, and the implications of dominant platforms for competition and market structure.
• Innovation, Complementor Dynamics, and Value Co-creation: Generativity, innovation governance, API and data access, developer relations, incentive structures, and strategies for value creation and capture across ecosystem participants.
• Content Governance, Speech, and Public Discourse: Content moderation, recommender systems, platform policies, and their effects on online speech, civic participation, and political communication across jurisdictions.
• Societal Risks, Safety, and Equity: Fairness, inclusion, and distributional effects of platform governance and algorithmic decision-making; information integrity and the maintenance of digital trust; safety, well-being, and protection of vulnerable users.
• Regulation, Policy, and Institutional Change: Antitrust and platform regulation, interoperability and portability, liability regimes, standards, oversight of platform policies and algorithmic systems, and the interaction between platform governance and public policy.
• Platforms and Socio-Economic Development: Platformization trajectories, local innovation ecosystems, informal economies, and societal impacts in emerging and developing contexts.