Digital Platforms and the Global South

This book addresses the issues raised by digital platforms in the Global South with an emphasis on the cultural stakes involved.It brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers – including political economists socio-economists geographers media sociologists or anthropologists – who each explore these issues through an insightful case study at a local national regional or international scale. While studying the strategies of some of the main US-based Big Tech platforms or video streaming platforms towards the Global South the chapters also consider the often-neglected active role local or regional actors play in the expansion of those Western digital players and highlight the existence of a constellation of local or regional platforms that have emerged in Africa Asia Latin America or the Middle East. In addition to analysing the complex relationships of competition collaboration or dependence between these diverse actors this volume examines the ways in which the rise of these digital platforms has generated new forms of cultural entrepreneurship and participated in the reconfiguring of the conditions in which cultural contents are produced and circulated in the Global South.This volume will appeal to readers interested in the transnationalisation of cultural industries or in the social political economic cultural and geopolitical dimensions of digital transformations and will be an important resource for students teachers and researchers in media communication cultural studies international relations and area studies programmes.