Digital Platforms in the Global South: Foundations and Research Agenda
Digital platforms have become integral to many of the everyday activities that people across the globe encounter in areas like transportation, commerce and social interactions. Research on the topic has largely concentrated on the general functioning of t
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Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, UK [email protected] 2 Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK {c.bonina,b.eaton}@surrey.ac.uk
Abstract. Digital platforms have become integral to many of the everyday activities that people across the globe encounter in areas like transportation, commerce and social interactions. Research on the topic has largely concentrated on the general functioning of these platforms in terms of platform governance, business strategies and consumer behaviour. Despite their significant presence in the global South, the developmental implications of digital platforms remain largely understudied. In part, this is because digital platforms are a challenging research object due to their lack of conceptual definition, their spread across different regions and industries, and their intertwined nature with institutions, actors and digital technologies. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: to provide a conceptual definition of digital platforms, and to identify research strands in international development contexts. To do so, we draw from digital platforms literature, differentiate between transaction and innovation platforms and expose their main characteristics. We the present four strands in the form of research questions, illustrated with concrete examples, that can assist to pursue relevant studies on digital platforms and international development in the future. Keywords: Digital platforms Development Research agenda Information systems
Global South
1 Introduction Digital platforms hold a central position in the business plans of some of the biggest companies of today, such as Facebook, Google, Alibaba and Apple. A survey conducted in 2015 identified 176 platform companies in the world, with an estimated global market capitalisation of 4.3tn USD - larger than Germany’s gross domestic product [16]. The same study revealed that publicly traded platforms alone gave direct We gratefully acknowledge funding from the UK ESRC Development Implications of Digital Economies (DIODE) research network to conduct part of this work. We also benefited from useful comments from Richard Heeks, the members of the DIODE network and the participants at the Development Studies Association Conference at the University of Manchester in June 2018. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2019 Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Nielsen and H. C. Kimaro (Eds.): ICT4D 2019, IFIP AICT 551, pp. 319–330, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18400-1_26
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employment to around 1.3 million people. Even though many of these platforms have their origins in the global North, they are becoming important also to the people in the global South due to increased access to devices and connectivity in these regions. Overall, digital platforms occupy more significant roles in areas like employment opportunities, social networking and innovation activities, which are all moving
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