Jia, L. orcid.org/0000-0003-2982-6490 (2025) Spatialization of digital platforms. Social Media + Society, 11 (1). ISSN 2056-3051
Abstract
This article challenges the common tendency to pinpoint a “nationality” to a multi-national capitalist platform company. It calls for a close examination of how platform companies, as capitalist enterprises, organize themselves legally and spatially. The article first reviews how platforms have been studied in relation to space. I then use the case of the Sina model, also known as the Variable Interests Entities (VIE) model, to challenge the meaning of the “Chinese” prefix. This example illustrates that, Chinese or not, capitalist platform companies engineer a composite geography to guarantee maximum flexibility and mobility for the accumulation of private wealth and, in the process, generate great power differentials. In short, this commentary is a call to study digital platforms over the course of capitalism permutations as well as its interpolation and interdependence with existing systems of power.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages |
Keywords: | digital platform; spatialization; VIE; legal arbitrage; platform capitalism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Feb 2025 14:34 |
Last Modified: | 24 Feb 2025 14:34 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/20563051251320696 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:223706 |
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