What is platform governance?

ABSTRACT

Following a host of high-profile scandals, the political influence of platform companies (the global corporations that that operate online ‘platforms’ such as Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and many other online services) is slowly being re-evaluated. Amidst growing calls to regulate these companies and make them more democratically accountable, and a host of policy interventions that are actively being pursued in Europe and beyond, a better understanding of how platform practices, policies, and affordances (in effect, how platforms govern) interact with the external political forces trying to shape those practices and policies is needed. Building on digital media and communication scholarship as well as governance literature from political science and international relations, the aim of this article is to map an interdisciplinary research agenda for platform governance, a concept intended to capture the layers of governance relationships structuring interactions between key parties in today's platform society, including platform companies, users, advertisers, governments, and other political actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Platform governance
• platform
• regulation
• Facebook
• Google
• accountability

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the participants in the #AoIR2018 session on ‘Platform Governance and Moderation’ for the feedback and critique that helped shape this article from the onset, and to the special issue editors, Alison Harvey and Mary Elizabeth Luka, for engaging so thoughtfully and carefully with not only this article's arguments but also its structure and style. I am further indebted to Nicolas Suzor, Corinne Cath, Thomas Poell, Ralph Schroeder, and the anonymous reviewers of ICS for taking the time to read and provide excellent comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Robert Gorwa is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, where his dissertation examines the political role of large technology ‘platforms,’ with a focus on evolving notions of corporate power and private governance in contemporary democracies. A graduate of the Oxford Internet Institute (MSc, 2017), and a researcher affiliated with Oxford's Centre for Technology and Global Affairs and Stanford's Project on Democracy and the Internet, his writing on technology and politics has been published in Foreign Affairs, Wired Magazine (UK), the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, and other popular outlets. [email protected]

ORCID

Robert Gorwa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4891-5053

Notes

1. For instance, past efforts to foist meaningful oversight mechanisms onto platform companies, such as the Federal Trade Commission’s 2011 and 2012 consent decrees regarding Google and Facebook’s deceptive privacy practices are seen to have largely failed (Gray, 2018).

2. An excellent example of this shift is seen in Emmanuel Macron's speech at the 2018 Internet Governance Forum in Paris.

Additional information

Funding

The author would like to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund for supporting his studies. As well, the author gratefully acknowledges travel support from the European Research Council grant, “Computational Propaganda: Investigating the Impact of Algorithms and Bots on Political Discourse in Europe,” Proposal 648311, 2015-2020, Philip N. Howard, Principal Investigator. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Research Council.