Platform Studies Reimagined: the Rise of Digital China and AI

Abstract This commentary points out two interrelated forces that have reshaped platform studies: the rise of digital China and the disruptive impact of frontier technologies, particularly artificial intelligence ( AI ). By foregrounding alternative imaginaries, such as the bamboo grove, and expanding the analytical axes of platform studies, this commentary calls for a better appreciation of and deeper engagement with alternative and emerging epistemologies. It proposes scholarly attention not only to content, code, chip, or policy, but how platformized flows connect and disconnect, and to what ends; and asking: not “what do platforms do?” but “what world do they build, for whom, and how?”