Open seminar at Score
Platform Governance as Democratic Self-Defense: Shaping the digital public sphere in democratic societies
This paper focuses on the democratic dimensions of states’ efforts to regulate social media platforms. Recent studies have analyzed efforts by states to regulate content on social media platforms to deal with challenges such as the viral distribution of misinformation, hate speech and threats, along with the amplification of conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric fueling social and political polarization. Scholars have also highlighted potential problems with such regulations including how they may lead to intrusive policies, the curbing of free speech, and disproportional instruments for monitoring citizens. However, less attention has been given to the specifically democratic aspects of the regulation of platforms. Scholars have yet to establish a common set of reference points that could help classify and differentiate between regulatory regimes from the perspective of how they balance concerns for various aspects of democracy. The aim of this paper is to develop such a framework, by theorizing the dimensions along which different regulatory regimes may be categorized and analyzed. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework through the analysis of recent cases of states’ social media regulation. In doing the paper sets out a broader research agenda for the study of how democratic states regulate social media platforms.
The paper is co-authored with Malin Holm (Uppsala University) and is part of the research project Shaping the Online Public Sphere, funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.
