Introduction: Regional Platforms

Abstract

Abstract This introduction provides an overview of this special issue on ‘Regional Platforms’, presenting its background, significance, purpose, and overall structure. To characterize the regional implications in platforms, we first define the concept of ‘platform’ by outlining its basic typology. We define three different types of platforms: product-technology type, content-platforms, and transaction-type. Each of the three designates a different meaning of the term platform and describes a different configuration of platforms in relation to media studies. Challenging the dominant mode of platform studies that presume a global geography for us -based examples, this special issue purposely situates our typology of platforms in regional terms. We argue that digital platforms have given rise to a sense of media regionalism and a renewed regional media geography through both transnational and transmedial processes. The five essays composing this issue are then summarized to demonstrate how the authors approach the question of the regionality of platforms.