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🧠 In the Platform Autopsy Project, you will act as a Media Analyst to conduct a deep investigation into a specific digital feature, analyzing its policy, business model, and cultural impact using course readings and primary sources. You will then present your findings in a creative format—such as a short documentary, podcast, or website—and conclude with a proposal for how to change the feature for the better.
Use at least three sources from class (theory and case studies) and three primary sources (interviews and explorations)
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Throughout this semester, we have explored the scaffolding of our global digital media world—the hidden infrastructures, economic pressures, and cultural forces that shape what we see and do online. For your final project, you will step into the role of a Media Analyst.
Your mission is to choose one specific, feature-driven digital platform and conduct a deep investigation—an autopsy—into its design, function, and impact. You will analyze it from three critical angles: policy, business pressures, and cultural norms. After presenting your findings in a creative media format, you will conclude by proposing a change—either small or radical—that could alter its function for the better.
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Platform: A socio-technical system that acts as a middleman, connecting different groups of users (like creators, audiences, and advertisers). A platform may be a social media site like Instagram, a marketplace, like Amazon, a streaming site, like Netflix, or a business tool, like Zendesk. Most of the major website we visit every day are platforms.
A platform is an infrastructure for collecting and using data from everything that happens on it so that it can monetize the data. This control over data gives platforms immense economic power and allows them to create their own private rules, often challenging the authority of governments and shaping global culture in the process.
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This final project is the culmination of the skills you've developed all semester. You are encouraged to repurpose, expand, and refine the work you've already done in our weekly labs. Think of your final project as the professional, polished version of the analytical work you've been practicing every week.
Your first and most important task is to select a very specific, feature-driven topic. You are not analyzing "all of Facebook." You are analyzing a single, crucial component. A narrow focus is key to a successful project.
Examples of well-scoped topics include: