Abstract
Digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft increasingly shape our everyday experience of the public sphere. Recent scholarship on platformization highlights the tension between public values and corporate interests, positioning platform power as a threat to democracy. This thesis questions the implicit tension between public and private interests, and considers platformization processes taking place within the public sphere. Taking the Norwegian library system as an object of study, this thesis seeks to understand how public institutions are reconfigured and remediated by networked platform ecosystems. The research theorizes the library as a platform and seeks to identify processes of platformization occurring within this institution. In doing so, it aims to explore how cultural practices such as governance and ownership are shaped by processes of platformization within the public sector. This exploration is guided by the research questions: 1) In what ways do platformization processes materialize within the Norwegian library sector? and 2) How does platformization shape cultural practices of governance and ownership within the library ecosystem? To address these questions, methodological triangulation of the following methods has been selected: 1) expert interviews with library staff; 2) discourse analysis of policy documents; and 3) participant observation of digital library activities. The thesis moves toward an understanding of platformization that may cultivate democracy and afford public institutions greater relevance in a digital world.