Infrastructures and Platforms in Media and Cultural Industries

Abstract

This article offers an overview of the topics explored during a conference track, titled Platforms and Infrastructures in Media and Cultural Industries, organised by the authors within the VIII STS Italia Conference held virtually in June 2021. The text starts outlining how infrastructural research, which emerged in science and technology studies (STS) and has been then adopted in different branches of media studies, evolved. To this end, it reviews some of the major works that embraced the so-called “infrastructural turn” in media studies. The emergence of platform studies is then outlined, a field that stemmed from game studies and, largely owing to the social relevance of social network platforms, subsequently became a major intersectional space between STS and media studies.