Platform Governance as Reflexive Coordination – Mediating Nudity, Hate Speech And Fake News On Facebook release_job2gl5torbsbnkqlxkkvygr4y

by Christian Katzenbach, Kirsten Gollatz

Published by Zenodo.

2017  

Abstract

Background Digital platforms have become dominant players in contemporary societies by positioning themselves as key sites for social communication and transactions (van Dijck, 2013). With platform governance becoming a major concern, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the ways how platforms perform this intermediary role – most notably to algorithms, practices and policies (Gillespie, 2014; Roberts, 2016; DeNardis & Hackl, 2015). What is still scarce, is (a) research that frames and explains these phenomena with key concepts of social theory, and (b) longitudinal studies that track these developments over time. This paper contributes to the debate theoretically by establishing a concept of platform governance as reflexive coordination based on institutional theory, and empirically by presenting a longitudinal study (2005-2016) that combines the analysis of Facebook's evolving policies and practices on controversial content (nudity, hate speech, fake news) with a policy and discourse analysis. Theorizing Platform Governance as Reflexive Coordination Governance is widely used as an umbrella term for all sorts of ordering and regulation processes. Yet, it is a notoriously slippery term that often remains vague and difficult to operationalize, repeatedly conflated with the term regulation. This conceptual weakness is reflected in the literature on platform governance. Governance of p latforms usually refers to public policy measures that try to steer platforms dynamics towards common good (safe harbor, tax and competition policy); governance by p latforms addresses companies' own measures (policies, algorithms) to influence behavior on their platform But this conflation of governance and regulation diminishes the concepts' analytical value. Neither the side effects of actions and processes pursuing non-regulatory goals (such as Facebook optimizing its platform for engagement), nor the role of public Platform Governance as Reflexive Coordination – Mediating Nudity, Hate Speech and Fake News on P [...]
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