Platforms in the Global South

This chapter draws upon the shared epistemologies of platform and infrastructure studies to examine processes of infrastructuralization and platformization and to emphasise its implications on political and economic life in the Global South. Beginning with the historical contexts that propelled the initial investments for communicative infrastructures and platforms in the Global South, the chapter highlights how the platformization of infrastructures and the infrastructuralization of platforms are differently articulated in the Global South countries compared to countries in the North; especially when it comes to the role of state and the role of platforms in enabling hate speech and violence. Infrastructures and platforms have also become indispensable for the effectiveness of states in terms of welfare and control of their populations thus shaping both every day and structural governmentalities in the Global South. The chapter concludes with some remarks on possibilities of rethinking infrastructures and platforms from a Global South perspective.