David Nieborg

Biography
Dr. David B. Nieborg is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough with a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Information. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Amsterdam (’22-’23), a Faculty Research Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute (’23-’24) and a Residential Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (’23-’24). He held visiting and fellowship appointments with MIT, the Queensland University of Technology, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. David published on the game industry, app and platform economics, and game journalism in academic outlets such as New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, and Internet Policy Review. He is the co-author of Platforms and Cultural Production (Polity, 2021) and Mainstreaming and Game Journalism (MIT Press, 2023). His research has been supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Teaching Interests
Social media, platforms, globalization, political economy, games
Research Interests
Platform studies, app studies, political economy, cultural production
Awards and Grants
2021 - Partnership Grant (SSHRC, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada). “Global Media and Internet Concentration Project” (2021-2028)
2020 - Knowledge Synthesis Grant (SSHRC). “The Impact of Digital Platforms on Canadian Media Production” (2020-2021)
2019 - Project Grant (CIHR, Canadian Institutes of Health Research). “E-GAMES Canada: la monétisation des jeux à l'ère des technologies mobiles et du numérique” (2019-2023)
Publications
Nieborg, D. B., & Foxman, M. (2023). Mainstreaming and Game Journalism. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546287/mainstreaming-and-game-journalism/
Poell, T., Nieborg, D. B., & Duffy, B. E. (2022). Spaces of Negotiation: Analyzing Platform Power in the News Industry. Digital Journalism, Online First. 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2103011
Poell, T., Nieborg, D. B., & Duffy, B. E. (2021). Platforms and Cultural Production. Polity. https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509540501
Nieborg, D. B., Young, C. J., & Joseph, D. J. (2020). App Imperialism: The Political Economy of the Canadian App Store. Social Media + Society, 6(2), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120933293
Rietveld, J., Ploog, J. N., & Nieborg, D. B. (2020). The coevolution of platform dominance and governance strategies: Effects on complementor performance outcomes. Academy of Management Discoveries, 6(3), 488–513. https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2019.0064
Nieborg, D. B., & Helmond, A. (2019). The political economy of Facebook’s platformization in the mobile ecosystem: Facebook Messenger as a platform instance. Media, Culture & Society, 41(2), 196–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718818384
Nieborg, D. B., & Poell, T. (2018). The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity. New Media & Society, 20(11), 4275–4292. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818769694
Projects