The Development & Consequences of New Information Infrastructures: the Case of Mashup Platforms

The advent of Web 2.0 has led to the development of new information infrastructures, where the logic of collective action is becoming more heterogeneous and multilayered, derived not from a single core structure (e.g. a corporation), but from networked interdependencies. Although lay users and expert user-developers act collectively towards commonly shared goals (e.g. producing, mixing, ripping and sharing digital content), their actions are not collective but rather are instigated under complex motivational structures whereby no single individual or group of individuals has complete information regarding all likely combinations of future events. This article explores the complex interactions of distributed networks of lay users, expert developers and owners of new information infrastructures such as Flickr. The article then focuses on the challenge of governing the consequences of these new information infrastructures and concludes with implications for further research.