Mapping the futures of Iran’s digital platform power

Platform power in Iran’s digital economy is not simply a matter of market share or clever technology, according to a new qualitative study that maps how dominance is built, legitimized, and potentially transformed. The research, published in the European Journal of Futures Research, examines transactional superplatforms spanning urban transportation, e-commerce, and delivery services, and argues that their power is sustained through an interplay of market concentration, data and algorithmic monopolization, algorithmic exploitation, the multisided dependence of users and small businesses, and institutional and regulatory gaps.

The study, led by Atoosa Ebrahimi Shah Abadi and Ali Mobini Dehkordi, applies Causal Layered Analysis (CLA), a futures studies framework that examines social phenomena across four layers: the litany of visible events and headlines, systemic and social causes, worldview and discourse, and deep myths or metaphors. Rather than forecasting outcomes, the method aims to uncover the assumptions and narratives that stabilize dominant trajectories and to open space for alternative futures. The authors argue that much existing platform scholarship remains present-focused, describing market concentration or business models while underplaying the narratives and imaginaries that frame certain platform futures as inevitable or desirable.

The empirical basis is an interpretive qualitative design combining 18 semi-structured expert interviews with two focus group discussions. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling across three groups: seven senior platform managers with current or former leadership roles in strategy, marketing, or human resources at major Iranian platforms; five policymakers and regulators, including mid-level officials from the Ministry of ICT, the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, and the Consumer Protection Organization; and six academic researchers specializing in technology management, competition law, and the digital economy. Fourteen of the 18 interview participants were men and four were women, with an average of twelve years of professional experience ranging from five to twenty-five years. Roughly half held doctorates in management, law, or information technology engineering.

Interviews typically lasted 90 to 120 minutes and covered three domains: perceived manifestations and mechanisms of platform power, institutional and regulatory dynamics, and anticipated future trajectories. Data collection and preliminary analysis proceeded iteratively, with theoretical saturation reached after approximately 15 interviews and three additional interviews conducted to confirm and refine emerging interpretations. The two focus groups, each lasting about 120 minutes with seven to eight participants, were designed to surface shared meanings and contested narratives. The first brought together governance and industry actors, while the second combined academic researchers with representatives of smaller digital ventures and worker-side stakeholders such as driver and courier representatives.

The analysis followed Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic approach, generating approximately 350 initial codes that were refined and consolidated into around 40 core themes. These themes were then mapped onto the four CLA layers. At the litany level, participants cited observable indicators such as rapid user growth, high commission rates imposed on sellers and service providers, algorithmic price fluctuations, and service delays during peak demand, indicators often framed in media coverage as both signs of success and routine operational shortcomings. At the systemic level, structural drivers included network effects, data monopolization, and institutional and regulatory gaps.

At the discourse layer, the analysis identified two competing framings that structure how platform dominance is legitimized or contested.

The first, labeled “innovation at any cost,” frames rapid expansion as synonymous with progress and treats regulatory intervention as inherently growth-reducing. A technology management scholar summarized it this way: “The dominant discourse equates innovation with growth and treats any form of intervention as a barrier.” The second framing, “digital justice,” foregrounds fairness, worker protection, data rights, and accountable governance. The authors stress that these are not merely rhetorical positions; they actively condition which governance responses appear feasible and legitimate. When innovation-centered narratives dominate, policy options tend to narrow toward accommodation and incrementalism, whereas the visibility of digital justice claims reintroduces questions of rights, redistribution, and accountability into debates about platform development.

Beneath these discourses, the analysis surfaced recurring metaphors that reveal deeper cultural narratives about platform dominance. Participants described platforms as a “digital empire,” a “gateway,” an “unleashed monster,” and the “algorithm as final judge.” One mid-level platform manager explained the lived experience of market access through the gateway image: “In sellers’ minds, the platform functions like a gate; if you are not on it, you simply do not exist.” From the worker side, a courier representative described the asymmetry of contestation under algorithmic management: “The algorithm acts as the final referee. Even if you object, your score goes down.” The authors argue that such metaphors condense complex sociotechnical realities into intuitive images of indispensability, centralization, and unaccountability, and help explain why platform power can persist even amid visible dissatisfaction. When platforms are imagined as unavoidable gateways to markets and livelihoods, exit becomes unthinkable and dependency becomes normalized, stabilizing dominance not only through switching costs and access asymmetries but through shared imaginaries that make contestation feel impractical or futile.

At the systemic level, participants pointed to a mutually reinforcing cluster of mechanisms. Network effects and scale economies interact with exclusive control over demand-side and supply-side data and the algorithmic systems that translate that data into pricing, ranking, allocation, and access decisions. A senior technology executive noted: “When we simultaneously control both demand-side and supply-side data, we can instantly adjust pricing and allocation decisions. This is an advantage that external competitors simply do not have.” Alongside these mechanisms, institutional and regulatory gaps allow platforms to become de facto rule-makers within their ecosystems. A regulatory expert put it bluntly: “The lack of a clear decision-making authority allows each platform to impose its own rules.” The authors argue that weak coordination and ambiguity amplify consolidation in Iran by reducing the frictions that typically constrain rule-setting power, and that power accumulation is accompanied by mechanisms shifting operational risks onto platform-dependent actors, particularly workers and smaller businesses, while centralizing decision-making within opaque algorithmic systems.

Building on these layered findings, the study articulates three indicative future pathways rather than predictions. The first, continued consolidation, becomes plausible when the “innovation at any cost” narrative remains dominant, institutional weaknesses and fragmented regulatory arrangements persist, and superplatforms consolidate their positions through proprietary data control and strong network effects. In this scenario, celebratory media narratives about unprecedented user growth or export success legitimize the trajectory, while algorithmic exploitation of platform-dependent workers intensifies and lock-in effects deepen for small businesses. The second pathway, discursive shift, arises when the digital justice discourse gains institutional traction through labor mobilization, civil society advocacy, and critical media engagement, enabling stronger regulatory autonomy and new rules on data transparency, equitable access, and worker protection. Under these conditions, new metaphors such as “responsible innovation” and “adaptive regulation” replace earlier dominant narratives, and platforms are compelled to align their practices with requirements related to social justice, data protection, and fair competition, producing a partial reconfiguration of platform power and governance arrangements.

The third pathway, fragile balance, emerges when limited reforms are introduced without altering the underlying dependence of users and small businesses on superplatforms. In this future, regulations may be adopted to reduce commission rates or increase algorithmic transparency while platforms retain their dominant positions, producing what the authors call a contradictory coexistence captured by the image of a “concentrated market with regulatory windows.” Such a balance remains inherently fragile and unstable, and may shift toward one of the other scenarios in response to social crises or external pressures. The authors emphasize that these pathways are interpretive futures grounded in qualitative evidence, not forecasts, and that each is shaped by key drivers and uncertainties regarding data transparency, regulatory capacity, and discursive legitimacy.

From these findings, the study draws differentiated implications. For platform executives, the authors suggest that power cannot be treated as a purely technical or competitive advantage; it is also a governance relationship whose legitimacy is increasingly scrutinized. Where ranking, pricing, and allocation are experienced as opaque, the costs extend beyond reputational risk into heightened institutional vulnerability as public narratives shift from innovation toward images of unaccountable dominance. Recommended actions include strengthening explainability and transparency around allocation and ranking, establishing credible appeal and review mechanisms, revisiting commission and penalty regimes that intensify perceived exploitation, and introducing accountable procedures around algorithmic decision-making that reduce arbitrary exclusion and uncertainty for workers and small businesses.

For policymakers and regulators, the authors argue that narrow competition policy or purely technical standards are unlikely to be sufficient, because the problem is simultaneously structural and institutional. They recommend prioritizing institutional coherence through clearer mandates and coordination among regulatory bodies, enforceable baseline rules on data transparency and access, and minimum protections for platform-dependent workers. Governance instruments, they contend, also need to address dependency and switching costs by supporting fair access, reducing lock-in, and making exit less punitive for users and small businesses, since the fragile-balance pathway shows how limited reforms can coexist with persistent structural dependence. Policymakers are further urged to engage explicitly with legitimacy struggles by articulating why accountability, fairness, and competition are compatible with innovation rather than opposed to it.

The authors also acknowledge several limitations. The qualitative, interpretive design prioritizes analytical depth over representational generalizability, so the findings should not be treated as population-level patterns. Direct participation from platform workers, small merchants, and end users was not systematically foregrounded as a primary sampling stratum, meaning some lived experiences of precarity, lock-in, and contestation are mediated through expert perspectives. The focus on Iranian transactional superplatforms enhances contextual specificity but limits immediate transferability to other regulatory environments, and the empirical material reflects a particular temporal moment in a rapidly evolving ecosystem. The authors additionally caution that the frequency counts reported for themes reflect coded references within this dataset and should not be interpreted as indicators of prevalence or intensity across the wider platform economy. They propose future research combining interpretive approaches with survey-based or mixed-methods designs, extending sampling to workers, couriers, small sellers, and users, conducting comparative studies across regulatory settings, and employing longitudinal and participatory futures methods to trace how narratives and metaphors evolve over time.

Subject of Research: Platform power and alternative futures in Iran's transactional digital superplatforms, analyzed through Causal Layered Analysis of expert interviews and focus groups

Article Title: Alternative futures of platform power in Iran’s digital economy: a causal layered analysis approach

Article References: Ebrahimi Shah Abadi, A., & Mobini Dehkordi, A. (2026). Alternative futures of platform power in Iran’s digital economy: a causal layered analysis approach. European Journal of Futures Research, 14(1), Article 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40309-026-00272-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40309-026-00272-0

Keywords: platform power, Iran, digital economy, Causal Layered Analysis, futures studies, algorithmic governance, thematic analysis, digital justice, superplatforms, regulation, scenario pathways, qualitative research