Platform-mediated local power in tourism
本文提出一个概念框架，分析数字平台如何重塑旅游中的地方权力，通过可见性、可信度和可转换性三个维度，揭示算法中介如何改变土地、资本、劳动和代表权的不对称。
This research note develops a conceptual framework for analysing how digital platforms reconfigure place-based power in tourism. Rather than treating the “local turn” as a bounded community or an ontological essence, the note approaches locality as a relational and contested claim, historically produced through political economy, mobilities and uneven social hierarchies, which is increasingly validated through platform infrastructures. Drawing on critical tourism political economy and platform studies, the note introduces platform-mediated local power to describe how platforms shape who can credibly claim local legitimacy, how such claims circulate across publics, and how they are converted into economic participation under ranking, review and recommendation regimes. Through the interrelated dimensions of visibility, credibility and convertibility, the framework shows how algorithmic mediation reorganises long-standing asymmetries in land, capital, labour, and representation by layering informational control onto material relations. The note concludes by arguing that decolonising tourism knowledge must be pursued alongside efforts to contest platform infrastructures through regulation, transparency and alternative forms of data governance. • Introduces the concept of platform-mediated local power in tourism • Shows how platform infrastructures reshape visibility, credibility and authenticity • Reframes local agency as contested and mediated outcome within platform economies