ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the second most dominant thematic cluster of research published in Digital Journalism: platforms. The chapter differentiates between platforms (like social media and search engines) and digital devices (desktop, smartphones, tablets, and others). The chapter introduced a wealth of research into platforms, which mostly has involved the study of social media platforms in Western contexts. Even though Facebook and WhatsApp are both attracting more users than Twitter, scholars have more often developed research designs involving the microblogging service. Few have studied Google, and few have studied Weibo, WeChat, Telegram and other platforms mostly used in Asia and the global south. Much research has been marked by exploring how news publishers build a platform presence, and how citizens access and engage with the news in such ways. Relatively few albeit more and more scholars have approached these developments in a more critical way, acknowledging that more is not necessarily better and that even platform counterbalancing may be necessary. The chapter also shows that few scholars have used research designs for news production studies where they differentiate between desktop, smartphones, and other devices, although mobile has quickly displaced desktop as the main gateway for accessing the news.
