Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin

Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin

Associate Professor | Exam Board Chair

Department of Media and Communications

Telephone
020 7955 6781
Room No
Room PEL.7.01i
Office Hours
By appointment on Student Hub
Connect with me

Languages
English, French, German
Key Expertise
Politics of Platforms; Data and Knowledge; Media Infrastructures

About me

Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His research investigates the increasingly infrastructural role that digital platforms play in society.

In his first book, Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography, (Wiley, 2014) he detailed the use of web-based mapping platforms by non-experts to participate in socio-technical debates, focusing on radiation mapping initiatives after March 11th 2011 in Fukushima, Japan. Following his postdoctoral research, he studied invisible labor in knowledge infrastructures, such as processing work in data archives, and the platformization of research data repositories. He is currently writing a monograph on how large tech companies shape our global communication infrastructure (through projects such as data centers, satellites, or undersea cables). He is also co-editing the SAGE Handbook for Data & Society (with Amelia Acker, Tommaso Venturini, and Antonia Walford).

Before joining the Department in 2015, he was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan (Department of Communication & School of Information). He holds a PhD in Communication & Information Studies from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France, and MAs from the Université Paris 8, France, and from the European Graduate School, Switzerland. He has held Visiting Fellowships at Northwestern University, Fudan University, Sciences Po, and Microsoft Research New England (Social Media Collective).

His work has been published in leading Media & Communications and Science & Technology Studies journals, including Media, Culture & Society, New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, Chinese Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, European Journal of Communication, and Sciences, Technology & Human Values. His research has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the European Regional Development Fund, LSE and the University of Michigan.

View CV.

Expertise Details

Politics of Platforms; Data and Knowledge; Media Infrastructures

Research interests

  • Politics of Platforms: platforms and public participation, platforms in China, mapping platforms, data sharing platforms
  • Data and Knowledge: open data, data sharing, big data and scholarship, data labor
  • Media Infrastructures: networking infrastructure, open compute, platform model applied to infrastructure.

Publications

Teaching and supervision

Postgraduate teaching

Dr Plantin convenes and teaches on the popular postgraduate course Digital Platforms and Media Infrastructures (MC434). Dr Plantin has also contributed lectures to team-taught postgraduate Media and Communications courses relating to theories and concepts (MC408/MC418), research methodologies (MC4M1/MC4M2), and Data and Communication in Society (MC430). He also teaches in the multi-campus course 'The Future of Europe' as part of CIVICA, the European University of Social Science.

Doctoral supervision

Dr Plantin welcomes applications from prospective doctoral students relating to his areas of research.