Below is the presentation of Antonio A. Casilli to the book The government of platforms. Digital media seen by Italians by Gabriele Giacomini and Alex Buriani. Casilli is Full Professor of Sociology at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and directs the DiPLab (Digital Platform Labor) research group. His research focuses on digital platforms, work and fundamental rights. Among his publications are noted Les liaisons numériques. Towards a new sociability? (Seuil 2010), Against the hypothesis of the end of privacy (with Paola Tubaro and Yasaman Sarabi, Springer 2014) e En attendant les robots. Enquête sur le travail du click (Seuil 2019).
In the media theory technologies are seen as instruments of “technological mediation” between the political subjects, citizens or communities that use them. In “The government of platforms. Digital media seen by Italians” (Meltemi 2022), on the other hand, the authors Giacomini and Buriani decide to “take a step back”, taking into consideration the hypothesis of those who see technology as a disintermediation tool. The question to be answered initially is precisely the one raised by this doxa widespread, from the impression of dissolution of institutions and political logics, where instead technology coagulates interests and powers. The disintermediation mentioned in the newspapers or in public debates is the central object of this analysis. According to common opinion, the digital platform would be its concrete hypostasis, the substance that manifests itself in the form of apps on our smartphones or algorithms in our software.
Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Amazon, are all examples of platforms that allow the circulation of messages and multimedia content, goods and services, work and pleasure. The platform acts as a place of exchange between different publics, from time to time producers and consumers, citizens with political opinions to be expressed urgently (and sometimes vehemently) or anonymous “without opinion” because taken by their private passions. And content, terabytes of content, is uploaded by media professionals, influencers of Instagram, creators of Youtube, but also (and above all, if we look at the numbers) by any aspirants, hobbyists or users who do not particularly stand out for their artistic qualities and communicative skills. Over the last twenty years, the most important effect of these structures on our societies has been to provide opportunities for communication, described by IT gurus and digital industrialists as free, frictionless, capable of overcoming any barrier.
This unparalleled opportunity for decentralized communication, however, confronts the risk perceived by some: that of an expression without the institutional counterweight of the structures traditionally responsible for the control and validation of quality information. The collective good, which is the Internet, then becomes “no man’s land” where the notion of is nestled fake newsconspiracy theories germinate, the anonymous and the troll. As always in the Western imagination, where there is a terra incognita, monsters are teeming there.
Going through Giacomini and Buriani’s book, and reading the results of their survey on a representative sample of our fellow citizens (42 graphs can be consulted in the text), allows us to understand to what extent this “new normality”, made up of distance interactions, it has profoundly changed not only the behavior of Italians, but also their inclinations and expectations. And Italy – which hardly shakes off the image of a peripheral country, despite being one of the most developed and important nations on the international scene – proves to be much closer to the “centre” because it participates in the same trend in terms of adoption of digital technologies.
While passing through the large mainstream platforms, the communication of Italians is marked by a growing attention to compliance with certain rules, such as those on privacy or general conditions. The strongest signal is given by the repeated references to the General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR), which has ensured a coherent legal framework for the protection of personal information at European level since 2018. The second of these signals, on the other hand, is the apprehension that focuses on the General Conditions of Use, the infamous GCUs to which platform users, rather than complying, resign themselves. A certain amount of frustration cannot be eliminated in the face of their scarce legibility, which also becomes a reason for stigmatization in the common discourse: it would not be the legal quibbles and the vexatious clauses that make them up that are opaque, but irresponsible users who are unable to read them.
The model underlying Giacomini and Buriani’s analysis is ultimately based on the misalignment between the online behavior of Italians and their aspirations. The most surprising aspect of their investigation is that Italians cannot avoid using the platforms, but are quite aware of the risks associated with them. They are reasonably critical and defend a range of claims: for example, that platforms don’t abuse the trust of their subscribers, that underlying companies pay taxes to states on profits made from personal data, that algorithms don’t intentionally make discriminatory choices .
It is interesting to read this misalignment not in terms of “schizophrenia”, rather in terms of digital divide. Although the notion of digital divide was initially referred to the separation between users and non-users of a certain technology, more recent research (also conducted by the writer) has shown its complexity. We are not dealing with just one, but several digital divide. Within each population there are gaps in terms of ability to use technological tools, or in terms of accessibility to information. It is not just a question of personal dispositions, but of the effects of social stratification. The position of relative privilege enjoyed by some people due to their gender, culture, heritage, race, physical ability or age also manifests itself in the use of digital technologies. It is clear, then, that those who are excluded and marginalized on the basis of these same socio-economic parameters are also excluded from the full use of digital technologies. In transparency, many other fractures can be glimpsed. One cannot, then, understand the digital divide if one does not study what Laura Robinson defines as a inequality stack, or a sedimentation of inequalities, digital or not. Crushed by this “stacking” of social divides are those who have access to technologies but not to agencyto the “power to act” connected to them, those who can access information but who, despite being aware of their limitation, cannot complete or correct it.
How to fight these inequalities? Platform governance it does not espouse radical theses, but demonstrates a reformist optimism. Beyond the adhesion or dissent of each reader, it represents a breath of fresh air with respect to the maximalist technocritical postures, as exaggerated as they are ineffective, which seem to prevail in the Italian publishing market. This leads the authors to recognize that for Italians a “city” dimension cannot be eliminated from an online presence. Perhaps this is the most important lesson of this book: that citizen-users know how to develop formal and informal strategies for recognizing the fake news, to preserve their anonymity or to have access to content not accessible in a particular country. And that, starting precisely from citizens’ guidelines, institutions have room to propose legislative innovations (for example, on the protection of personal data, on antitrust instruments or on the taxation of platform profits) capable of tackling the significant challenges posed by technologies digital.
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