The Technicity of Platform Governance: Structure and Evolution of Facebook’s APIs

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dc.creatorvan der Vlist, Fernando N.
dc.creatorHelmond, Anne
dc.creatorBurkhardt, Marcus
dc.creatorSeitz, Tatjana
dc.date.accessioned2023-02-24T14:56:55Z
dc.date.available2023-02-24T14:56:55Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractResearchers, policymakers, and competition and regulation authorities worldwide recognise application programming interfaces (APIs) for powering the digital economy and driving processes of datafication and platformisation. However, it is unclear how APIs tie into the power of, and governance by, large digital platforms. This article traces the relationality between Facebook’s APIs, platform governance, and data strategy based on an empirical and evolutionary analysis. It examines a large corpus of (archived) developer pages and API reference documentation to determine the technicity of platform governance – the technical dimension and dynamics of how and what platforms like Facebook seek to govern. It traces how Facebook Platform evolved into a complex layered and interconnected governance arrangement, wherein technical API specifications serve to enforce (changes to) platform policy and (data) strategy. Finally, the article discusses the significance of this technicity in specifying the material conditions for app and business development ‘on top of’ platforms and for maintaining infrastructural and evolutive power over their ecosystems.en
dc.identifier.doi10.25819/ubsi/9951
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19311
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/20487
dc.identifier.urnurn:nbn:de:hbz:467-19380
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherUniversität Siegen: SFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation
dc.publisher.placeSiegen
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectPlatformen
dc.subjectAPIen
dc.subjectFacebooken
dc.subjectDataficationen
dc.subjectPlatformisationen
dc.subject.ddcddc:300
dc.titleThe Technicity of Platform Governance: Structure and Evolution of Facebook’s APIsen
dc.typeworkingPaper
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
local.academicbookseriesSFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation – Working Paper Series
local.coverpage2023-02-24T16:19:59
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://dspace.ub.uni-siegen.de/handle/ubsi/1938
local.source.volume20

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