Module manager: Dr Ludmila Lupinacci
Email: L.Lupinacci@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable
Year running 2026/27
| COMM5785M | Platforms and Society |
COMM3895 Digital Platforms: Critical & Cultural Analysis
This module is not approved as an Elective
Digital platforms now shape different sectors of society, posing new challenges and opportunities for workers, creators, artists, audiences, citizens, politicians, and businesses. We will consider how streaming platforms have disrupted music production and distribution, or how social media platforms have transformed practices of interaction, information, content creation and consumption. Platforms affect how we communicate, how we understand and perform our identities, how we develop intimate relationships, how we entertain ourselves, how we keep informed, how we work, how we make and spend money, how we move, shop, and organise. This module adopts a sociotechnical approach to study the role of digital platforms in contemporary society, focusing on the ‘platformisation’ of different industries and spheres of social life. Students will examine the emergence and evolution of digital platforms, and unpack their role in twenty-first century media, communication and culture. To do so, students will draw upon a wide range of academic fields and disciplines, including media industry studies, science and technology studies, software studies, cultural studies, as well as the growing fields of “platform studies”, “infrastructural studies”, and “critical algorithm studies”. Please note this is an optional module and runs subject to enrolments. If a low number of students choose this module, then the module may not run and you may be asked to choose another module.
The module aims to introduce key contemporary debates surrounding ‘digital platforms’, with special focus on the realm of media, communication, and culture. Adopting a global perspective and using specific case studies and examples from different parts of the world, it aims to explore the consequences of ‘platformisation’ both to users and to platform workers. The module aims to explore the opportunities and challenges that arise from this platform-centric model, examining how it has democratised access to cultural production while also raising questions about ownership, authorship, (in)visibility, and cultural homogenisation. Students will examine how increasingly powerful platforms affect the production, distribution, and consumption of cultural goods, scrutinising what is specific to creative labour in a constantly evolving platform ecology. The module also aims to reflect on emerging mechanisms of platform control and the tactics developed by workers and users to circumvent and resist them. Students will engage with current debates on the environmental costs of big tech companies and artificial intelligence. Together, we will imagine a more socially just digital future.
On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
1. Mobilise and apply theories, concepts, and examples to define and examine digital platforms of different sectors in real-world settings.
2. Critically analyse the major digital platforms operating in the realm of media, communication and culture from a global perspective.
3. Appraise current debates about the benefits and problems of digital platforms across a range of cultural forms.
4. Evaluate the topic within broader, foundational debates in media and communication
On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
Identify, search for, evaluate, and use relevant information sources to support their arguments.
Communicate complex ideas in intelligible, creative, and compelling form.
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lecture | 10 | 1.5 | 15 |
| Seminar | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Private study hours | 175 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 25 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
The group project is intended to be formative as well as summative. Students will also receive ongoing formative feedback in seminars via responses by staff to discussions of readings and of issues and debates that have arisen in the lectures. They will have opportunity to discuss their work in progress with the module leader during office hours.
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Group Project | Group presentation | 30 |
| Case Study | Case Study | 70 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Upon request, students who are not comfortable delivering oral presentations in front of an audience can alternatively submit their contribution to Assessment 1 as a pre-recorded video. For Assessment 1, resits will consist of submitting a video recording of an oral presentation by an individual student, following the same brief as the group project. For Assessment 2, resits will use the original brief.
Check the module area in Minerva for your reading list
Last updated: 30/04/2026
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