Data integration and analysis platforms as digital platforms: a conceptual proposal

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Abstract

In this paper, we conceptualize platforms that aim at data integration and analysis as a distinct type of digital platform. Based on the existing literature on digital platforms in general, which so far did not engage with data integration and analysis platforms, we present a definition of data integration and analysis platforms as a digital platform type in its own right. To emphasize the specificity of this platform type, we present a case example, Palantir Technologies, and highlight its structural characteristics and key technical features. The case study shows that data integration and analysis services should be understood as platforms, because like other platforms, they serve as modifiable digital infrastructures that bring together different parties and enable data-dependent interaction. It is especially important to understand data integration and analysis platforms as digital platforms because these platforms have their own politics and determine what happens on them, as we illustrate with regard to two important social values that are part of the data sovereignty of organizations: epistemic opacity and epistemic control. We conclude that it is time that platform research not only scrutinizes those technologies and companies that are visible to the eye of large numbers of end-users, but also those that operate in the dark.