Digital Platforms Resilience: A Sensemaking Issue

This paper contributes to the academic literature on the platform society in two ways: Theoretically, we bridge the literature on the platform society with the literature on sensemaking. In particular, we take a processual approach to platform resilience as the outcome of sensemaking processes. Empirically we look at the process whereby platforms generate self-sustained users’ interest and self-promoting content in the long run. Thus, platform resilience is understood as the outcome of a sensemaking process. We frame this outcome strategically as market-place persistence and durability (attracting/maintaining users and complementors) and socially as persistence and replication of generated content, social outcomes and the narratives that platform participants may promote. New social structures in turn may reshape the platform. Such a dual sensemaking outcome shapes platform market strategy and re-shapes social structures. The two outcomes are connected but not necessarily convergent. A platform might not be strategically resilient but the narratives that platform participants may promote might resist and shape the societal debate in the long run and vice versa. We set out our argument by assessing evidence from two case studies, namely Facebook and Airbnb.