Platform-mediated local power in tourism

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.