Platform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulation
<p>Billions of people around the world use services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube every day to access information, engage in conversation, and stay in touch with friends and family. These hugely profitable and popular platforms for user-generated content, operated by large mul...
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Format: | Thesis |
Language: | English |
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2021
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author | Gorwa, R |
author2 | Kello, L |
author_facet | Kello, L Gorwa, R |
author_sort | Gorwa, R |
collection | OXFORD |
description | <p>Billions of people around the world use services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube every day to access information, engage in conversation, and stay in touch with friends and family. These hugely profitable and popular platforms for user-generated content, operated by large multinational technology companies, have in the past decade created complex systems of private regulatory standards that govern online behaviour and have a significant impact on the social, cultural, and political lives of their customers around the world. Where these systems --- which can be understood by International Relations (IR) scholars as an expression of private authority in global politics --- were once tacitly accepted or ignored by state actors, governments have in recent years increasingly sought to shape the rules and practices deployed by platform companies through various strategies. In some cases, governments have sought to `take back control' and re-assert state authority over this privately-managed domain, while in others they have opted rather to work directly with companies in more collaborative fashion. What explains the variation in how governments intervene in platform governance?</p>
<p>The thesis argues that how governments seek to shape, challenge, or contest private platform rule-making can be understood as either fitting in within a collaborative or a contested strategy. Building upon literatures from transnational regulatory politics, the thesis explains variation between these two strategies as the result of an interplay between three factors: domestic demand for change, the ability to supply that change (regulatory capacity and transnational or domestic institutional constraints on that capacity), and normative understandings of an actor's appropriate degree of policy intervention. The plausibility of the argument is demonstrated empirically through three qualitative case studies of key regulatory episodes (the German NetzDG, the Australian AVM Act, and New Zealand’s Christchurch Call) in which different governments have deployed different strategies to affect platform rule-making.</p> |
first_indexed | 2024-03-06T23:06:13Z |
format | Thesis |
id | oxford-uuid:63e39d1b-eb8e-4ee8-8df2-d128fee59ee6 |
institution | University of Oxford |
language | English |
last_indexed | 2024-12-09T03:16:43Z |
publishDate | 2021 |
record_format | dspace |
spelling | oxford-uuid:63e39d1b-eb8e-4ee8-8df2-d128fee59ee62024-10-21T08:32:26ZPlatform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulationThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:63e39d1b-eb8e-4ee8-8df2-d128fee59ee6Politics and governmentRegulationGlobalizationTechnology and international relationsEnglishHyrax Deposit2021Gorwa, RKello, LHale, T<p>Billions of people around the world use services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube every day to access information, engage in conversation, and stay in touch with friends and family. These hugely profitable and popular platforms for user-generated content, operated by large multinational technology companies, have in the past decade created complex systems of private regulatory standards that govern online behaviour and have a significant impact on the social, cultural, and political lives of their customers around the world. Where these systems --- which can be understood by International Relations (IR) scholars as an expression of private authority in global politics --- were once tacitly accepted or ignored by state actors, governments have in recent years increasingly sought to shape the rules and practices deployed by platform companies through various strategies. In some cases, governments have sought to `take back control' and re-assert state authority over this privately-managed domain, while in others they have opted rather to work directly with companies in more collaborative fashion. What explains the variation in how governments intervene in platform governance?</p> <p>The thesis argues that how governments seek to shape, challenge, or contest private platform rule-making can be understood as either fitting in within a collaborative or a contested strategy. Building upon literatures from transnational regulatory politics, the thesis explains variation between these two strategies as the result of an interplay between three factors: domestic demand for change, the ability to supply that change (regulatory capacity and transnational or domestic institutional constraints on that capacity), and normative understandings of an actor's appropriate degree of policy intervention. The plausibility of the argument is demonstrated empirically through three qualitative case studies of key regulatory episodes (the German NetzDG, the Australian AVM Act, and New Zealand’s Christchurch Call) in which different governments have deployed different strategies to affect platform rule-making.</p> |
spellingShingle | Politics and government Regulation Globalization Technology and international relations Gorwa, R Platform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulation |
title | Platform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulation |
title_full | Platform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulation |
title_fullStr | Platform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulation |
title_full_unstemmed | Platform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulation |
title_short | Platform governance: the transnational politics of online content regulation |
title_sort | platform governance the transnational politics of online content regulation |
topic | Politics and government Regulation Globalization Technology and international relations |
work_keys_str_mv | AT gorwar platformgovernancethetransnationalpoliticsofonlinecontentregulation |