Theorizing Data Analysis Platforms: Digital Refractions and Reconfigurations of Pasts, Presents and Futures

Digital platforms are a pervasive force in the transformation of business, organization and social order, but also an evolving phenomenon in need of further conceptualization and detailed analysis. This article offers a theorization and analytical framework for the study of a sub-type of digital platforms that we may think of as data analysis platforms, and which play an increasingly important role in organizations, business, and society more broadly. Starting from a theoretical focus on how data, algorithms and technological systems work as ‘digital prisms’ that refract and reconfigure social phenomena, the article articulates how data integration and data-driven prediction can be seen as forms of knowledge production that allow for new dynamics of seeing, knowing and governing. On this backdrop, the article highlights five analytical dimensions of data analysis platforms (domains, datasets, models, humans and temporality) and offers a conceptualization of three different types and uses of data analysis platforms (data merging platforms, data prognosis platforms and data projection platforms). Taken together, this analytical framework may guide conceptual and empirical investigations and pave the way for more nuanced understandings of the shape, workings and societal ramifications of data analysis platforms. The article contributes to emergent research seeking to articulate the shapes and workings of digital platforms. The conceptualization of digital platforms may help us understand as the digitalization and datafication of knowledge production, work and organization, the reliance on platforms, as well as broader questions about how data, algorithms and digital systems are used in attempts to grasp and shape futures.