Over at Mediapolis Journal, I have published a new essay on what I think might some emergent interdependences between platforms (specifically social media) and local care during the COVID-19 pandemic. One possible reaction to this news might be, “Not another take on Covid!” As the below passage I’ve excepted from the essay indicates, I’m well aware of and in some respects share this kind of fatigue, yet hope I’m offering maybe just a little more than a shoot-from-the-hip hot take. Do read the full essay if you have the time and disposition, and also check out the dossier in the same issue on ‘Media and the Physically Distanced City‘.

There has been some skepticism about the avalanche of academic hot takes on what the COVID-19 pandemic means for X or Y field, or how theory Z might shine some light on what this all means. This skepticism is on the whole healthy, but I also think that it is entirely legitimate that our novel if unevenly experienced circumstances might spur a little reflection. What seems interesting to me is how the pandemic underscores that the flexible organization already associated with digital platforms might entail more of a priority for the local than scholars have tended to think. The question that follows is how might care or attention in relation to local life depend increasingly on the socio-technical organizing environments of platforms. A critique of platform power, or prevailing discourses of localism, will only get us so far. We also might need to think, for instance, about alternative platform models for re-mediating technologies and institutions of a democratic and just local life. This is not only a conceptual task but a practical one too, involving research and action bringing together affected interests and stakeholders, inside the academy and in society at large.