The article examines global submarine data cable projects from 1989 to 2028 (N=804) to explore the evolving political economy of digital media and communication infrastructures. Focusing on the growing number of new cable projects and their ownership, we identify several phases of network expansion, which correspond with different types of market dominance and ownership constellations. In the early phases of submarine cable buildout, the main market actors were national and regional telecommunications corporations, often collaborating in large consortia, whereas the later phases see a growing concentration of ownership around a set of global market actors, often establishing their own networks to support their extensive platform and data businesses. In interpreting this development, we seek inspiration from previous historical analyses of large-scale technological systems and argue that the internet has reached a momentum where its built-in affordances lead to a fundamental shift in institutional power. We end by discussing the implications of this historical transformation, emphasizing that the new generations of cable systems amplify an already walled-off ecosystem, where access to the superior infrastructure is conditioned by the usage of proprietary services, leading to a reintegration of the network and service layer that the internet originally separated.
This article asks how our capacities to conduct critical research on digital power are influenced by depending, empirically and methodologically, on powerful market actors controlling the underlying research infrastructure. Building on discussions at the intersection between digital methods, political economy and infrastructure studies, we zoom in on three cases of widely used commercial data tools and repositories for academic studies. Mapping out their methods and applications, we ask of each case: Who owns and offers it? What is (not) measured? And, how is it mobilized in existing research? We thereby explore how they each contribute to the construction of knowledge by setting the standards for measuring, monitoring and ultimately regulating digital power. We conclude that the constructions of digital research infrastructures should be placed at the centre of our investigations – as objects of analysis and as research findings in and by themselves.
In recent years, submarine cable systems have grown in size and velocity, with nation-states, venture groups, and US-based platform corporations investing heavily in this backbone of the global internet. However, a significant share of new cable projects are abandoned, prompting us to explore what this particular type of ‘ghost infrastructure’ can teach us about the ongoing reconfiguration of infrastructural power in digital societies. To unfold these epistemic potentials, we apply online archival methods and identify 65 unrealised projects – that is, one ghost cable project for every ten cables laid across the ocean floor. We then explore the main ‘causes of death’, finding that lack of funding and geopolitical unrest are recurrent triggers of cable abandonment. Investigating the ‘afterlives’ of deceased projects, we find that some disappear completely, others are acquired or replaced, while a final few are resurrected under altered names, with new owners and slightly adjusted routes. Taken together, our analysis suggests an asynchronous power balance where smaller and regionally oriented market actors compete with platform corporations operating on a global market; where actors reliant on attracting external public and private funding are competed out of business by billion-dollar corporations with the necessary funds in-house; and where consortia spending years on negotiating, planning, and establishing a connection are being surpassed by single corporations moving at a higher pace. This imbalance is self-reinforcing, as skewed market conditions allow dominant actors to advance their profit-generating services while sidelining others and deepening dependency, thereby consolidating the economic and infrastructural power of the platform corporations.
Amid the increasing reliance on digital tools and services in education, this article examines the datafication and commodification of student life in Denmark. We analyse the web and app (iOS and Android) versions of 45 tools and services that teachers in Danish public primary schools use as part of their teaching, the types of data generated by them, and the market actors harvesting and distributing the user data. The analysis finds that the websites and apps collect significant amounts of user data, use it for functional as well as commercial purposes, and distribute it to a long list of third-party services. In light of these findings, we reflect on how the increasing datafication of school life and the inherent commodification of digital learning challenge established welfare state ideals surrounding public schooling, raise challenges for schools and teachers alike, and create new inequalities amongst students.
This article discusses how we can locate and understand infrastructural power in mobile infrastructures for datafication through dissecting third-party tracking via so-called software development kits (SDKs). As key material components of mobile infrastructures, SDKs enable app functionality, security, and access to data collection and use by third-party services. However, the methods for investigating SDKs and mobile datafication in general are fragile and in urgent need of development and critical discussion. We explore and discuss methodological pathways for understanding power in the mobile ecosystem. Through exemplifying empirical interventions, derived from a sample of 1129 apps used by 69 Danes participating in the Datafied Living research project, we investigate and discuss how Apple and Alphabet hold infrastructural power and perpetually consolidate their effective mobile duopoly while simultaneously protecting and enhancing their assets in related data markets (e.g. through mobile advertising). We argue that the current infrastructures for mobile datafication impede transparency, systematic democratic monitoring, and ultimately regulation while also limiting the critical capabilities of researchers, as well as open source and hacker environments who must constantly adjust their counter-intelligence measures and tools.
A growing body of research centers around the concept of “datafication” suggesting a buzz around data studies and, perhaps, the emergence of a research field. This article analyzes and discusses the current state of datafication research. Our dataset comprises 463 publications on datafication identified through a systematic literature search in Web of Science and Scopus, an explorative network analysis of keyword co-occurrences and a content analysis of these publications. We map datafication research interests in various research fields, find that the majority of studies are theoretically oriented, whereas empirical analyses largely apply qualitative approaches and rarely make use of data-driven methods. We suggest studies on datafication can be devised into categories reflecting research interests in either user understandings and practices or in infrastructure and technological processes of datafication. The latter strand is particularly sparse in empirical anchoring, and needs empirical and methodological attention. We conclude by outlining three paths for future datafication research to cross-pollinate infrastructural and user perspectives, highlighting the bridging role of communication research in such an endeavor.
Recalling the well-known strategy of “following the money” when investigating the underlying power structures and business models of legacy media, this article argues that studies of digital political economies can benefit instead from following the data. Combining perspectives from critical data studies and infrastructure research, we first discuss how direct money flows can be difficult to trace in digital ecosystems, creating a need for alternative analytical approaches for studying and scrutinising contemporary power configurations in digital societies. As a theoretical backdrop, we elaborate on the concept of infrastructural power and apply it in a walkthrough of critical data infrastructures. To illustrate the efficacy of this strategy, we provide perspectives and examples from the political economies of internet infrastructures in Northern Europe and discuss how control over data is translated into economic profit and societal power. In doing so, we argue that increased attention to data infrastructures is needed to advance both critical data and infrastructure studies, improve digital market monitoring, and ground future regulation and policy.
The increasing use of mobile applications (apps) has turned data harvesting, mining, and distribution into commercial as well as functional backbones of mobile communication. Acknowledging that contemporary markets for mobile communication are increasingly datafied, this article maps and discusses how infrastructures for mobile datafication are controlled. It combines perspectives from critical data studies, political economy of communication, and app studies in an empirical analysis of the 500 most downloaded apps in the Google Play store (November 2020). Focusing on control over and ownership in the three interdependent markets for apps, data accesses, and third-party services, the analysis documents, confirms, and explains established power structures and sheds light on the mobile datafication processes that frame the use of apps and commodification of users. As such, it provides an empirical baseline for future monitoring, and ultimately regulation, of mobile app ecosystems.
Abstract The article traces the evolution of over-the-top (OTT) services in order to analyse how the growing use of Internet distribution influences the structural conditions and institutional arrangements in Denmark. This story is told in four parts: first, I outline how the shift from postal services to e-mail restructured the conditions for asynchronous one-to-one communication; second, I examine the introduction of web-based services and the declining role of the press as gatekeeper for asynchronous one-to-many communication; third, I focus on the impact of mobile broadband and smartphones on synchronous one-to-one communication and the telecommunications sector; and fourth, I analyse the emergence of streaming technologies and the reorganisation of synchronous one-to-many communication and broadcasting. Building on these examples, I argue that key welfare state principles have come under pressure and that research tends to underestimate the fundamental transformations of the institutional order.
I løbet af de seneste 30 år har digitaliseringen medført en markant restrukturering af de teknologiske, økonomiske og politiske vilkår for kommunikation: internettet er blevet en fælles infrastruktur, der kan erstatte alle tidligere kommunikationsnetværk, globale virksomheder har udfordret nationale institutioners forretningsmodeller og markedspositioner, og eksisterende kommunikationspolitisk lovgivning og regulering har vist sig tiltagende utilstrækkelig. Denne artikel tegner et portræt af internettets evolutionære udvikling i Danmark fra 1992 til 2020 og diskuterer de væsentligste politiskøkonomiske implikationer ved overgangen til digital kommunikation.
The mobile market is frequently described as an ecosystem where powerful companies generate value from continuously harvesting and distributing data. In this article, we advance the ecological metaphor through both theoretical conceptualizations and empirical explorations of the contemporary app ecosystem. We thereby contribute to the emergent field of app studies by critically scrutinizing the political economy of mobile communication. The article identifies the prime infrastructural resources that ground app-based communication (devices, operating systems, app stores, apps, third-party services, and data accesses) and their ownership structures to discuss how power is obtained, exercised, and amplified in the app ecosystem. To illustrate the value of the theoretical approach, we provide a critical asset analysis of Google LLC (Alphabet, Inc.) and discuss its position as an invasive species in the app ecosystem.
The article develops a methodological and empirical approach for gauging the ways Big Data can be collected and distributed through mobile apps. This approach focuses on the infrastructural components that condition the disclosure of smartphone users’ data – namely the permissions that apps request and the third-party corporations they work with. We explore the surveillance ecology of mobile apps and thereby the privacy implications of everyday smartphone use through three analytical perspectives: The first focuses on the ‘appscapes’ of individual smartphone users and investigates the consequences of which and how many mobile apps users download on their phones; the second compares different types of apps in order to study the app ecology and the relationships between app and third-party service providers; and the third focuses on a particular app category and discusses the functional as well as the commercial incentives for permissions and third-party collaborations. Thereby, the article advances an interdisciplinary dialogue between critical data studies, political economy and app studies, and pushes an empirical and critical perspective on mobile communication, app ecologies and data economies.
Abstract This article offers a research tool for comparative studies of digital communication systems. It brings together the fields of infrastructure studies, Internet governance, and political economy of the Internet with the tradition of systemic media analysis and argues that existing frameworks are inadequate for capturing regulatory and power structures in a complex digital environment. In the article, we develop a framework for conceptualising and mapping the components of digital communication systems – the DCS framework – and operationalise it for standardised measurements by outlining twelve key indicators that can be analysed using empirical data from a number of existing databases. The framework provides a basis for measuring and comparing digital communication systems across national or regional contexts, and thereby developing new typologies for how to understand structural differences and similarities.
This article presents a framework for mapping digital communication systems and thereby analyzing how and why structural conditions differ across national contexts. Following the 'turn to infrastructure' in Internet studies, we conceptualize communication systems as made of infrastructural, market, and policy structures that enable and constrain mediated communication in a given society. As opposed to media system analyses that typically focus on legacy media institutions, we take individual Internet users as our theoretical point of departure and ask how their communicative capabilities are regulated. In order to exemplify the application of the framework, we describe the methodological steps in a mapping of the components of the Danish communication system. In conclusion, we discuss the overall findings that the method uncovers and its implications for future comparative research.
This article studies the evolution of the internet infrastructure and assesses emerging digital power structures and regulatory dynamics. We revisit and develop Thomas P. Hughes' momentum theory (1994) and contend that the internet, as other large technological systems, has evolved in different phases reflecting a shift from being mainly influenced by socio-economic conditions to having a determining influence on the development of societal structures. We argue that contemporary internet infrastructure studies can benefit from Hughes' theoretical approach, but also need to strengthen their methodological and empirical strategy. The article contributes to this by approaching the changes in digital infrastructures, markets, and state policies in Denmark from 1992 to 2019. Building on database material, we analyse the development of digital devices and internet connections, submarine fibre optic cables and internet exchange points, websites, and digital content. We conclude that the identified changes confirm Hughes' momentum hypothesis: in the beginning the implementation of the internet reflected historical market structures and institutional characteristics, while the later development challenges and transforms the established regime.
It has long been acknowledged that the use of ‘free’ mobile apps comes at a price, but few empirical studies have looked into this supposed trade-off. This article combines qualitative interviews with mappings of infrastructures for datafica-tion in order to study the implications of mobile app usage from the perspective of individual users. It analyses users’ understanding of online tracking, maps the infrastructural tenets of mobile datafication, and finds a disconnect between what users believe happens to their data and the actual data harvesting and distribution mechanisms of their apps. We thereby argue that users’ resigned attitudes should be understood in light of the material conditions of the app economy and, as such, that user and infrastructure studies should join forces in exploring and enhancing users’ agency, empowerment and emancipation.
It has long been acknowledged that the use of ‘free’ mobile apps comes at a price, but few empirical studies have looked into this supposed trade-off. This article combines qualitative interviews with mappings of infrastructures for datafication in order to study the implications of mobile app usage from the perspective of individual users. It analyses users’ understanding of online tracking, maps the infrastructural tenets of mobile datafication, and finds a disconnect between what users believe happens to their data and the actua data harvesting and distribution mechanisms of their apps. We thereby argue that users’ resigned attitudes should be understood in light of the material conditions of the app economy and, as such, that user and infrastructure studies should join forces in exploring and enhancing users’ agency, empowerment and emancipation.
The article describes the historical development of Danish press subsidies from the 1960s until the passing of the 2013 Law on Media Subsidies. By mapping the changes in legislation, the political discussions and parliamentary processes it is shown that the media political discourse has changed over the last 50 years. State subsidies for the private press have gone from being a controversial political issue in the beginning of the period to becoming a legitimate tool for regulation of the media. This development suggests a growing resemblance between the Danish media policy and the traditions in the neighbouring Scandinavian countries, where direct press subsidies and a higher degree of state regulation have prevailed since the 1970s. In a media system perspective (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) the increasing legitimacy of press subsidies can be seen as a political ‘brake pad’ limiting the convergence with the liberal model and strengthening the corporate-democratic structures of the Danish media system.
