One for my Reading List from Merlyna Lim (check out her other work too if you haven’t already):
Lim, Merlyna. “Platform Islandization: The Making of the Computational Archipelago.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias, vol. 12 no. 2, 2026, p. 223-247. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/vrg.2026.a997479.
“This essay introduces platform islandizationto theorize digital life beyond questions of infrastructure or access, through situated rhythms and ruptures that challenge the universalist claims of platform logics. Platform islandizationis a socio-technical process in which bounded and selectively connected publics emerge within platformed environments. This process produces computational archipelagos: fragmented configurations of visibility, access, and affect structured by platform logics and infrastructures. I articulate platform islandizationacross three registers— infrastructural-experiential, epistemic-ethical, and aesthetic-algorithmic—revealing fragmentation as a patterned condition rather than a deficit. Grounded in long-term research in Indonesia, this framework invokes “Indonesia as method” and offers a portable analytic for understanding how people and digital systems mutually reorder publics, emotions, and knowledges across diverse contexts.”
