There is a growing public and scholarly attention to the environmental footprint of digital technologies, and to the climate responsibility of technology corporations and social media platforms specifically. Developing a critical understanding of the environmental responsibility and accountability of digital platforms, Platforms and the Planet focuses on the environmental responsibility of the so-called Big Tech, their digital media platforms and their role in the sustainability transition as a discursive, material, and ethical question.
Written from a much-needed critical and cross-disciplinary perspective, challenging the prevailing perspective on digital platforms as green and non-material entities, the chapters unpack their non-sustainable, material essence. Bridging critical platform studies with environmental studies and environmental communication studies, the chapters explore three broad themes. First, the chapters unpack what environmental sustainability means in relation to platforms. The second theme scrutinises the material and infrastructural dimensions of the digital platform society from the perspective of sustainability and global justice. Third, the chapters dive into the discourses of accountability by both digital platforms and actors criticizing them.
This edited collection is compelling reading for a wide range of researchers and students both in the fields of media and communication studies, digital sociology, and other fields of critical technology studies and environmental studies. The book will also be useful for those interested in global platform companies from the perspective of management and organization studies or more broadly as societal actors.
Introduction: Conceptualising and Theorising the Environmental
Responsibility of Digital Platforms; Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, Mervi Pantti,
and Olga Dovbysh
Section
1. Unpacking Environmental Sustainability
Chapter
1. The Eco-Materiality of Digital Platforms; Martina Skrubbeltrang
Mahnke
Chapter
2. The Challenging Task of Estimating the Carbon Footprint of Digital
Services; Salla-Maaria Laaksonen and Gopika Premsankar
Chapter
3. Understanding Moral Lapses in Design: Cultural Biases, Beliefs,
and Narratives as Factors of Accidental Evil; Thomas Olsson
Chapter
4. Calculating, Reducing, Compensating, and Disconnecting: Summons of
Digital Excess; Minna Vigren, Tero Karppi, and Olli Pyyhtinen
Section
2. Infrastructures and Materiality
Chapter
5. The Archival Paradox: DNA-Based Data Storage and the Data Hoarding
Crisis; Mél Hogan, Deb Verhoeven, and Tessa J. Brown
Chapter
6. This Photograph has Never Been in a Data Centre: An Experimental
Intervention in Pursuit of Responsible Research Practice; Flora Mary Bartlett
and Julia Velkova
Chapter
7. Platform Opacity in the Global E-waste Dilemma; Lauren E. Bridges
and Vusumuzi Maphosa
Section
3. Discourses of Responsibility
Chapter
8. Counter Accounts and Digital Advocacy: How Activists Enforce
Platform Companies Environmental Accountability; Markus Ojala and Mervi
Pantti
Chapter
9. Challenging Plastic Polluters: Public Shaming Campaigns on Plastic
Pollution on Social Media Platforms; Steph Hill
Chapter
10. Greening the Platforms or Organisational Bullshit? A Typology of
Empty and Misleading Environmental Communication by Global Platform
Companies; Meri Frig, Olga Dovbysh, and Salla-Maaria Laaksonen
Chapter
11. Climate Justice in Big Techs Environmental Reporting; Mervi
Pantti and Elis Karell
Closing Words
Afterword: Big Tech in a World-In-Crisis; Simon Cottle
Salla-Maaria Laaksonen is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Consumer Society Research and an Adjunct Professor of Media and Communication studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Mervi Pantti is Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Olga Dovbysh is a postdoctoral researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland.
