This article provides an account of the question of method as it relates to collective modes of research organised, conceived and produced through the interplay between digital technologies of communication and offline strategies of investigation. It does so by exploring the orchestration of research platforms, which are mediating devices that constitute the production of knowledge across a range of geocultural settings. In the context of a project entitled Transit Labour: Circuits, Regions, Borders, the article maintains that research methods must contend with the ideological, technological and economic instruments that condition knowledge production at the current conjuncture. The platform, we argue, operates as a medium through which research, labour, subjectivity and knowledge are shaped in ways specific to hardware settings, software dynamics and the materialities of labour and life.
Keywords: digital methods, infrastructure, labour, logistics, platform research, software
Kanngieser A, Neilson B and Rossiter N 2014 What is a research platform? Mapping methods, mobilities and subjectivities. Media, Culture and Society 36(3). 302-318 [pdf]