COM Research Seminar: Visibility in the Age of Platform Data Traffic

06 Oct 2026 (Tue)

On 28 September 2026, Professor Bingchun Meng from the London School of Economics and Political Science delivered a seminar titled “Visibility in the Age of Platform Data Traffic.”



In the seminar, Professor Meng revisited the long standing social scientific view of visibility as a resource tied to recognition and power, and argued that platform environments add a further layer in which visibility is computed. She noted that visibility is now ranked, circulated, and monetized before any human audience ever sees it. Drawing on Andrea Brighentis theory of visibility as a sociological category, she proposed three updates for the platform age. First, data traffic adds a layer of visibility that precedes perception itself. Second, valorisation makes visibility simultaneously an act of recognition and an act of economic extraction. Third, competing orders of worth mean that the same visible act can be judged legitimate and illegitimate at once. Taken together, these updates raise the question of what it would mean to measure visibility as multiple rather than singular.



Faculty members and doctoral students from the Department of Media and Communication attended the session and engaged in an active and thought provoking exchange. In the discussion section, Professor Meng addressed questions from the audience. She shared valuable insights and elaborated on how platform data traffic changes both the meaning and the measurement of visibility.

Bingchun Meng is a Professor in the Department for Media and Communications at LSE and the Director of LSE PhD Academy and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). Her research interests include gender and the media, political economy of media industries, communication governance, and comparative media studies. She has published widely in these topic areas in leading academic journals.