Algorithmic platform societies are societies where large tech companies are instrumental in determining cultural representation, cultural distribution and cultural consumption. In the West, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google are referred to as the ’big five’, and together they exceed huge power in determining modern cultural representation. These companies are influential as social network sites, search engines, web browsers, advertising service programs, video-sharing services, geospatial information system services, cloud platforms, software, hardware, app stores, pay services, and thereby to large degree control the infrastructural backbone of digital cultural production and cultural consumption (Bratton 2015; Pasquale 2015; Zuboff 2015; Gillespie 2018; van Dijck et al. 2018). Furthermore, the geopolitics of these services are formed in constant reciprocal relations between the local, the national, the supranational and the global. Therefore, the peripheries of the cultural field have changed dramatically in the span of relatively short time.
This paper aims to theoretically discuss some of the consequences of these changes from the view point of (digital) cultural policy. This will be done by accounting for the macro sphere of tech giants, algorithmic cultures, platform societies and big data, and how these relate to the traditional normative assumptions inherent in cultural policy. On a meso level, the paper will discuss how established ac tors and institutions within national cultural fields are increasingly dependent on using these services, particularly in realizing the promise of cultural participation. Finally, the paper will treat this from the micro level of ’user politics’, and citizens’ rights as data subjects.