Section: New Results

Geopolitics of intermediation platforms

Our study of the geopolitics of intermediation aims at grasping the balance of power between platforms, as well as between states - in their relation to platforms - and between platforms and states. We have designed coarse metrics [1] which capture the importance of a platform and the importance of a country in the digital landscape.

Our study focuses on the top 25 websites in a hundred countries. We emphasize the weight of intermedations platforms on the web. We also underline the imbalance between two digital powers - the United States and China - and the rest of the world. Indeed, most platforms belong to these two countries. We have extented our study to a deep analysis of the Asian case [8] . We develop our analysis in an interdisciplinary context as we collaborate with cartographers and economists. Two outcomes of our work are especially notable:

• We produce a set of maps and data vizualisations to illustrate the intermediation economy [11] .

• We highlight the determinants of the imbalance in the intermediation landscape. National policies and incentives are of primer importance. The digita landscapes of Korea and Taiwan for instance, show that countries can still play a main role in their domestic web [8] .