Creole Platforms

Digital Hybridisation and Platform Governance
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-981-9246-37-3
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan

Buch, Englisch, 276 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm

Reihe: Platform Societies

This book examines how platform workers create informal digital governance in conditions of regulatory uncertainty and urban informality. Centred on Drivers Club Bogotá, a community of ride-hailing drivers in Colombia, it analyses how WhatsApp, Zello and Facebook are creatively repurposed into a socio-technical assemblage for dispatch coordination, safety management, rule-making, conflict resolution and collective knowledge sharing to operate beyond the reach of both corporate control and state regulation. These hybrid formations are neither corporate platforms nor platform cooperatives, but community-governed systems built from accessible consumer technologies and pre-existing social networks.

Bringing together platform studies, digital sociology, urban studies and science and technology studies, traces how platform governance emerges from below in Bogotá and compares these dynamics with platform adaptation in Nairobi, Kenya and Jakarta, Indonesia. The analysis highlights digital hybridisation, epistemic infrastructure and urban informality as central to understanding platform economies in the Global South. It also considers the policy implications of hybrid platform governance and connects the findings to wider debates on AI governance and community-based knowledge systems.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lozano Paredes, Luis

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften Digitale Medien, Internet, Telekommunikation
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Rethinking Platform Governance Beyond Binaries.- Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework - Assemblages, Institutions, and Affordances.- Chapter 3: Platform Informality and the Urban South.- Chapter 4: The Birth of a Creole Platform - Drivers Club Bogotá.- Chapter 5: Governance Without Algorithms.- Chapter 6: Creole Platforms in Comparative Perspective.- Chapter 7: Policy Implications and Governing Hybrid Platform Economies.- Chapter 8: Conclusion: Creole Platforms, Epistemic Infrastructure, and What Comes Next.

Über Autor(innen)

Luis Lozano-Paredes is Lecturer at the Transdisciplinary School, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. His research examines platform governance, AI governance, digital government, institutional design and socio-technical systems. Trained in architecture and urban economics, he holds a PhD in Governance from UTS and has worked in policy roles in Argentina's Federal Government.