A platformiser for ethical platformisation
File(s)
Author(s)
Scott, Matthew S.
Type
Thesis or dissertation
Abstract
The process of platformisation in the Digital Society has produced an ecosystem of large-scale, privately-owned, and monopolistic platforms. While this has produced many pro-social benefits, there are corresponding technical and anti-social drawbacks, such as limited opportunities for reuse, reduced support for domain-specific customisation, toxic dependency, algorithmic misinformation, and the entrenchment of asymmetric power relationships.
This thesis proposes a counter-process called ethical platformisation (EP). EP is intended to enable the ground-up self-organisation of social coordination by stakeholder communities, in a way that enables communities to incorporate ethical principles not just at the micro (platform) level, but at the macro (ecosystem) level too. In order to foster EP, this thesis also proposes an innovative tool for producing ethical platform ecosystems. We call this type of tool a platformiser. Accordingly, this thesis provides five contributions:
- We conceptualise EP as a counter-process to platformisation and provide eight EP Principles for how this process should be conducted;
- We conduct a critical analysis of the techno-politics of platformisation by investigating platform structuration across two dimensions of architecture and composition;
- We provide a proof of platform completeness by deriving an abstract platform formalism and corresponding mapping function for refinement into a concrete plugin architecture;
- We introduce PlatformOcean as one possible implementation of a platformiser by specifying the relevant algorithms and data structures for its constituent components; and
- We apply the PlatformOcean platformiser across six testcases, assessing the two dimensions of ecosystem scalability: platform cardinality and plugin cardinality.
This class of platformiser tool demonstrates that there is a viable alternative to the centralisation of power caused by the profit-driven leveraging of the digital platformisation process. Critically, the PlatformOcean implementation of a platformiser facilitates the counter-process of EP to produce ethically-inspired platform ecosystems for the purpose of community and stakeholder re-empowerment.
This thesis proposes a counter-process called ethical platformisation (EP). EP is intended to enable the ground-up self-organisation of social coordination by stakeholder communities, in a way that enables communities to incorporate ethical principles not just at the micro (platform) level, but at the macro (ecosystem) level too. In order to foster EP, this thesis also proposes an innovative tool for producing ethical platform ecosystems. We call this type of tool a platformiser. Accordingly, this thesis provides five contributions:
- We conceptualise EP as a counter-process to platformisation and provide eight EP Principles for how this process should be conducted;
- We conduct a critical analysis of the techno-politics of platformisation by investigating platform structuration across two dimensions of architecture and composition;
- We provide a proof of platform completeness by deriving an abstract platform formalism and corresponding mapping function for refinement into a concrete plugin architecture;
- We introduce PlatformOcean as one possible implementation of a platformiser by specifying the relevant algorithms and data structures for its constituent components; and
- We apply the PlatformOcean platformiser across six testcases, assessing the two dimensions of ecosystem scalability: platform cardinality and plugin cardinality.
This class of platformiser tool demonstrates that there is a viable alternative to the centralisation of power caused by the profit-driven leveraging of the digital platformisation process. Critically, the PlatformOcean implementation of a platformiser facilitates the counter-process of EP to produce ethically-inspired platform ecosystems for the purpose of community and stakeholder re-empowerment.
Version
Open Access
Date Issued
2026-03-08
Date Awarded
2026-08-01
Copyright Statement
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC)
License URL
Advisor
Pitt, Jeremy V.
Publisher Department
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Publisher Institution
Imperial College London
Qualification Level
Doctoral
Qualification Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)