Platform Teknolojileri ve Temsiliyet Sorunu: Uber ve Booking.com Vakaları

Year 2019, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 286 - 309, 27.03.2019

Ebru Tekin Bilbil

https://doi.org/10.14782/ipsus.539230

Abstract

Booking.com ve Uber firmaları vaka analizlerine odaklanmaktadır. Bu çalışma ile, bu firmaların

faaliyet gösterdikleri piyasaların yapısını değiştirmesi, çıkar ilişkilerini tetiklemesi ve yeni müdahale

alanları yaratması irdelenirken bu alanlarda ortaya çıkan temsiliyet sorunları incelenmektedir.

Booking.com ve Uber’in bu çalışma dahilinde vaka örnekleri olarak seçilmesinin sebepleri arasında

iki firmanın da Türkiye’de yasal takipte olması; geleneksel piyasaya karşı yenilikçi uygulamalara sahip

olmaları; dünyada da bu firmalar ile ilgili farklı yasaklama ve yasal düzenleme getirilmiş olması yer

almaktadır. Literatürde, dijital platformların yasal değişimleri nasıl kışkırttığına ilişkin olarak dört

yöntem kategorize edilmektedir. Bu yöntemler şu şekildedir: (1) Yasayı ihlal etmek ya da yasalardan

kaynaklanan gri alanlardan istifade etmek; (2) Piyasada yasaklanamayacak kadar bir büyüme sağlamak;

(3) Tüketicileri ve diğer paydaşları siyasi güç için harekete geçirmek; (4) Daha ziyade geleneksel siyasi

teknikler uygulamak. Söz konusu bu çalışma temsiliyet sorununun formal olan ve formal olmayan ile

siyasi ve politik ikilemlerinin ötesinde dijital platform firmalarının nasıl muğlak, çetrefilli ve belirsiz

yeni siyaset alanlarını oluşturduğu ve yine bu alanlardaki müdahale süreçlerinde nasıl daha çetrefilli

temsiliyet problemleri yarattığını incelemektedir. Ayrıca, bu çalışma, sözü geçen siyaset alanları

içerisindeki aktörlerin koşullara bağlı yaklaşım ve etkileşimlerini temsiliyet sorunu çerçevesinde

irdelerken, bu hizmetlerden mahrum kalan gruplar açısından temsiliyet boşlukları olduğunu ortaya

çıkarmaktadır. Meslek birliklerinin, yenilikçi teknoloji ve yeni ekonomi piyasası temsiliyetinde

boşluklar yaratacak şekilde çıkar faaliyetlerine girerek temsiliyet boşlukları yarattığı görülmektedir.

Bu temsiliyet boşluğu aynı sektördeki STK’lar arasında da çatışma alanları yaratmaktadır. Bu analiz

ışığında, temsiliyet sorunu 6 faktör açısından söz konusu vaka analizleri üzerinden sonuçlandırılabilir.

Bu faktörler şu şekildedir: (1) Kurumsal tercihler, (2) Kimin katıldığı, (3) Kimin dışlandığı, (4) Nasıl

katılım sağlandığı, (5) Katılımın gerekçeleri, (6) Sonuç üzerindeki etki. Buna göre, çalışma şu sonuçları ortaya çıkarmıştır: (1) Türkiye’de dijital platform firmaları özelinde onların da haklarını koruyucu

bir regülasyon olmaması; (2) Yeni teknolojilerin tetiklediği regülasyonların farklı müdahale alanları

ve ilişki formları yaratması; (3) Seçimle gelen tepeden-aşağıya temsiliyet ile betimsel ve sembolik

temsiliyet arasında yeni iletişim, yönetişim ve etkileşim alanlarının geliştirilmesi gereği. Bu çalışma

vaka analizi metodunu benimserken kalitatif görüşmeler, telefon mülakatları ve katılımcı gözlemler ile

doküman analizlerine dayanmaktadır.

Keywords

Temsiliyet, Uber, Booking.com, Yeni Ekonomiler, Platform Teknolojileri, Yasal Regülasyon

Platform Technologies and Representatin Problem: Uber and Booking.com Cases

Abstract

By examining the company cases of Booking.com and Uber, this study focuses on the representational

gaps in new areas of politics, which are created by the new economy. By analyzing the problems of

representation in these new areas, this study focuses on how these firms have changed the market

structure, triggered the interest relations and created new areas of intervention. The reasons of the

selection of Uber and Booking.com as case examples include that: both have engaged with legal

proceedings in Turkey; they have innovative practices as a challenge to the traditional market; there

are different prohibitions and regulations about these firms around the world. While digital platform

firms are defined as ‘regulatory entrepreneurs’, there are three categories of how these digital platforms

provoke legal changes: (1) Violating the law or taking advantage of the gray areas of law; (2) Ensuring

a significant growth in the market so that they cannot be prohibited; (3) Mobilizing consumers and

other stakeholders for political power; (4) More traditional political techniques to apply. Therefore,

beyond the formal-non-formal and politics-political dilemmas of the representation problem, this

study analyzes how digital platform firms create ambiguous, contradictory, and uncertain areas of

politics. Moreover, this study examines how these firms constitute again more contradictory problems

of representation during the intervention processes. As such, by probing the conditional approaches

and interactions of the actors, this study also indirectly reveals the gaps in the representation of those

who are in favor of these services as well as firms that provide these services. Therefore, this study

presents that professional associations have created the representational gaps by engaging interestbased

activities that seem to result in creating the gaps in the representation of innovative technologies

and markets of the new economy. Moreover, this gap in representation creates the areas of conflict

even among NGOs within the same sector. In light of this insight, the case analysis results with 6

factors to analyze the problem of representation. These factors are as follows: (1) Institutional choices,

(2) Who participated, (3) Who is excluded, (4) How is participated, (5) Reasons for participation, (6)

Impact on the outcome. Therefore, the outcomes of this study might be summarized as follows: (1)

There is a lack of regulation on protecting the rights of digital platform firms and their services in

Turkey; (2) Regulations triggered by new technologies create different intervention areas and forms of

relationships; (3) There is a need for the development of the new areas of communication, governance

and interaction between election-based top-down representation, on the one hand; and descriptive and

symbolic representation, on the other hand. By adopting the case analysis method, this study is based

on qualitative interviews, telephone interviews, participant observations and document analyses.

Keywords

Representation, Uber, Booking.com, New Economy, Platform Technologies, Legal Regulation

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