Adaptive governance: How digital platforms change their design

The adaptive evolution of digital platforms and their design changes remains understudied and platform change often remains obscure. The aim of our study is to unravel changing platform design in a process that we call adaptive governance: the process of strategic, platform-directed design change in response to internal and external stakeholders. We identify three strategies. Via capture, a digital platform introduces features that take over functions produced by users. Via imitation, platforms mimic the functionalities of other digital platforms. Via alignment, they implement features because users demand it. Our study therefore relates to the platform governance literature. Strategies such as capture and imitation represent governance by platforms since it shows how Twitch has an influence on its users. On the other hand, the strategy of alignment is about governance of platforms by showing that external actors can also have an influence on their design. We test our framework in the case of Twitch. We tracked design changes on the digital platform with a mixed-methods approach, combining analysis of chroniclers, interviews, and content analysis. Hence, we reconstruct a picture of adaptive governance on digital platforms by showing that Twitch has developed through a continual adaptive process of capturing user practices, imitating competitors, and aligning to meet user demand. This framework can be utilized in future critical studies, enabling researchers to identify pressures and patterns motivating platform design change.