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A substantial body of research has emerged on the conditions that impact how and when industry stakeholders adopt digital platforms. However, in the construction industry in general—and the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry in particular—to date, this research remains fragmented, which hampers our understanding of how digital platforms can enhance productivity and value creation. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the benefits and challenges of adopting digital platforms and integrating them into the AEC industry. We conduct a systematic literature review on digital platform integration to identify themes that are relevant to the AEC industry. Based on our findings, we develop an integrative model that captures the phases of digital platform adoption and integration and outlines where different industry stakeholders tend to face challenges in this process, and we pinpoint where benefits can be derived. We employ this model to derive a research agenda that will fill the identified knowledge gaps currently existing in our understanding of construction industry stakeholders' integration within the digital platform space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To mediate the tensions between state regulation and content-creator incentives, Chinese social media platforms have developed an interesting practice of using platform official accounts to communicate their rules to the creator community. These accounts anthropomorphize platforms, enabling platforms to represent their regulatory bodies using fictional human characters or animated figures. The phenomenon of platform anthropomorphization in the Chinese context stems from a different ontological understanding of platform governance. The first part of this article discusses the logic of platform governance in China, and highlights a different state–platform relationship in comparison to the US and European countries. In the second part, the article turns to focus on Douyin as a case study to further investigate how Chinese social media platforms establish rules and govern content creators. By analysing Douyin's public-facing policy documents and its platform official account, Douyin Safety Centre, we reveal a mechanism of playful governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of news media bargaining codes as a way of regulating relations between digital platforms and news publishers. Taking the Codes developed in Australia and Canada as policy case studies, the paper discusses recent reforms which respond to the unequal bargaining power between digital platforms and news media publishers. Despite these reforms, there are few guarantees that funds received by news publishers will be reinvested into public interest journalism. The article asks whether the discourse surrounding digital platform regulation generally, and measures by nation-states to rebalance market relations to the benefit of news publishers, are likely to yield necessary safeguards required to sustain public interest journalism, promote reliable information, and stabilise democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The AI development community is increasingly making use of hosting intermediaries, such as Hugging Face, which provide easy access to user-uploaded models and training data. These model marketplaces lower technical deployment barriers for hundreds of thousands of users, yet can be used in numerous potentially harmful and illegal ways. In this article, we explain the ways in which AI systems, which can both 'contain' content and be open-ended tools, present one of the trickiest platform governance challenges seen to date. We provide case studies of several incidents across three illustrative platforms – Hugging Face, GitHub and Civitai – to examine how model marketplaces moderate models. Building on this analysis, we outline important (and yet nevertheless limited) practices that industry has been developing to respond to moderation demands: licensing, access and use restrictions, automated content moderation, and open policy development. While the policy challenge at hand is a considerable one, we conclude with some ideas as to how platforms could better mobilise resources to act as a careful, fair, and proportionate regulatory access point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online platforms often encounter the challenge of system vulnerabilities, such as bugs, which can be exploited by certain users for illicit gains. These platforms face a dilemma when devising countermeasures, particularly in deciding whether to penalize rule breakers. Different countermeasures can lead to varying economic impacts, including subsequent user engagement. In this study, based on unique field data from a prominent online gaming platform, we discovered that the occurrence of bugs has a negative effect on the online duration and consumption of observing players. Surprisingly, although the platform is responsible for the bugs, not penalizing rule breakers results in more substantial reductions in platform engagement among observing players compared with penalizing them. This effect is particularly pronounced for observers who are directly affected by rule violations. Our findings emphasize the essential role of the platform in fairly punishing rule breakers. To ensure the long-term prosperity of an online platform and the overall welfare of its participants, it is crucial for the platform to maintain high-quality system control and implement effective governance mechanisms for rule enforcement, thereby restoring justice and order to the online community. Online gaming platforms are inevitably subject to system loopholes such as bugs. Some players may take advantage of these bugs to gain benefits illegitimately, being viewed as rule breakers by platforms. Online platforms face a dilemma between disciplining rule breakers with the risk of being perceived as unfair to the rule breakers—because rule breaches are, after all, caused by the game software's technical glitches and belong to a "gray area"—and not disciplining rule breakers with the risk of being perceived as unfair to the observers. Different recovery measures may result in significantly different economic impacts. In this study, we use the unique field data of an online gaming platform to examine the effects of players' rule-breach behavior due to system bugs and the platform's different recovery measures on players' subsequent engagement. Using various empirical models, we find that the occurrence of bugs negatively impacts the observing players' in-game online duration and consumption. Surprisingly, although the platform is responsible for the bugs, not punishing rule breakers leads to even larger reductions in observing players' platform engagement than punishing them. We thus suggest that the primary driver of the engagement reduction is the platform's inappropriate recovery measure, rather than the bugs, and call online platforms' attention to designing effective rules and recovery measures under the situation of a rule breach. Our findings enrich the literature and theories concerning the relationships between online platform loophole exploitation, associated recovery measures, and sustained user engagement. History: Wonseok Oh, Senior Editor; David (Jingjun) Xu, Associate Editor. Funding: X. Yang acknowledges the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [72272075, 71872086], Nanjing University Special Program for Middle and Long Term Outstanding Research in New Era Humanities and Social Sciences [14914220], and Nanjing University Special Program for Young Faculty in Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences [14370115]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2020.0416. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the theoretical perspectives of value co-creation and value appropriation in platform governance, this study explores how a platform can design motivation mechanisms to induce the proactive efforts of providers to reduce customer complaints. We conducted a field experiment on a major Chinese peer-topeer real estate platform offering long-term rental properties. Specifically, when a renter (customer) complaint about a host (provider) occurs, we sent reminder messages to other unaffected hosts in the same neighborhoods (as the affected host) and urged them to proactively prevent similar complaints. The reminder messages varied in terms of their emphasis of the roles of different stakeholders in platformbased value co-creation (provider-emphasized vs. customer-emphasized) and how they explicated different value appropriation mechanisms (competition-based vs. cooperation-based). Results show that compared to the control message, customer-emphasized messages effectively motivated providers' proactive efforts to reduce customer complaints. Contrastingly, provider-emphasized messages led to the undesirable outcome of increasing customer complaints, possibly due to providers' shirking behavior. We also found that a competition-based value appropriation mechanism strengthened the motivating effect, whereas a cooperation-based mechanism undermined the motivating effect. The study provides important theoretical and practical implications for platforms on the design of effective governance mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against continuing attempts in Europe to draw an "essentialized" picture of Muslims as a group characterized by foreignness, backwardness, threat, and cultural incompatibility with core European values, this article focuses on the implications of a "racialized" representation of Muslims online, placing emphasis on women. An intersectional analysis of the impact of online hate speech is justified by the fact that this category of persons experience harm as a consequence of the interaction of their gender, religious affiliation, and ethnic origin as identity markers that single them out as "targets" for online hate speech. Taking into account the exponential growth of online hate speech targeting Muslims, the aim of the analysis is to show the need for an intersectional approach to anti-Muslim hatred online, especially in connection with the harm that such speech creates for women. By securitizing Muslim communities, online hate speech sets the basis for serious limitations on the freedom of expression, freedom of association, and political participation of a vulnerable segment of contemporary European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Western technology platforms began colonizing online spaces, they have neglected Majority World populations, including those in MENA/SWANA countries like Lebanon. This neglect exacerbates harassment and violence against marginalized individuals, reinforcing systemic harms in Lebanon's cisheteropatriarchal and sectarian society. Our study draws on 14 in-depth interviews with women and queer journalists and activists in Lebanon who have faced online harassment and violence. Utilizing Sarah Ahmed's feminist notion of complaint, we explore the flaws in platforms' reporting mechanisms and document what we term 'techno-alienation': a state where those marginalized by these platforms feel abandoned and unable to envision an inclusive digital future. Participants highlighted that online platforms are addressing these issues too little, too late, leading to estrangement and disengagement among users who feel left behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers potential strategies to address existing challenges facing health systems in the United States (U.S.). However, the development of the AI market for health care over the past decade also poses risks to public value in the short- and long-term. In this commentary, we describe the nature of large technology companies’ interface with health care in the U.S., outlining their roles in the context of their leadership in the platform economy. First, we describe the risks associated with the potential dominance of Big Tech companies in healthcare and outline the short-term context for regulating AI as it relates to Big Tech’s role in healthcare. We then explore the possibilities of regulatory approaches that might encourage the anticipation of risks and enforcement of responsible technology practices while retaining the goal of enhancing public value as a primary aim of healthcare policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a federal right to abortion access in the country. Ensuing disparate abortion legalization throughout the country made pertinent the question of whether and how digital platforms would promote or demote abortion-related content. In this study, we explore folk theories in the domain of abortion-related speech. We investigate conceptualizations and heuristics of how users think platform governance and shadowbanning – a practice in which content is demoted without a user knowing about it – work. Through in-depth interviews with 19 pro- and anti-abortion activists in the United States, we examined how activists thought platforms adjudicated their content. We found that, while the two ideologically disparate communities of activists developed differing folk theories on platform governance, they overlapped in thinking that they were censored by platforms precisely because of what they believed in and had shared on social media. This feeds into a general assumption that platforms' decisions are ideologically motivated, a phenomenon we refer to as ideological suspicion. Our results show that when users do not know how platforms render content decisions about abortion-related speech, this can lead to troubling feelings of marginalization, isolation, and censorship, but it can also motivate activists to ensure their beliefs are heard in a hostile platform environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws from an ethnographic investigation of YouTube to argue the significant and specific role of advertising in the governance of platformised cultural production. We pursue this investigation in a critical dialog with theoretical approaches drawn from platform governance, platformisation and political economy communications, foregrounding the concept of the audience commodity. In our analysis of official and unofficial YouTube content, the role and desires of advertisers were discussed in depth. Community commentary videos publicly argued that YouTube cared about advertisers more than a content creating community; marketing-orientated entrepreneurial growth content advised creators to pursue a 'buying audience'; and YouTube's official communications painstakingly reminded creators to 'put themselves in advertisers' shoes'. Each of these perspectives contributes an understanding of the ways advertising structurally shapes the governance of cultural production in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, social media platforms have introduced several measures to counter misleading information. Among these measures are "state-media labels" which help users identify and evaluate the credibility of state-backed news. YouTube was the first platform to introduce labels that provide information about state-backed news channels. While previous work has examined the efficiency of information labels in controlled lab settings, few studies have examined how state-media labels affect users' perceptions of content from state-backed outlets. This article proposes new methodological and theoretical approaches to investigate the effect of state-media labels on users' engagement with content. Drawing on a content analysis of 8,071 YouTube comments posted before and after the labeling of five state-funded channels (Al Jazeera English [AJE], China Global Television Network, Russia Today [RT], TRT World, and Voice of America [VOA] News), this article analyses the effect that YouTube's labels had on users' engagement with state-backed media content. We found that the labels had no impact on the amount of likes that the videos received before and after the policy introduction, except for RT which received less likes after it was labeled. However, for RT, comments left by users were associated with 30% decrease in the likelihood of observing a critical comment following the policy implementation, and a 70% decrease in likelihood of observing a critical comment about RT as a media source. While other state-funded broadcasters, like AJE and VOA News, received fewer critical comments after YouTube introduced its policy; this relationship was associated with how political the video was, rather than the policy change. Our study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the efficacy of platform governance in relation to state-backed media, showing that audience preferences impact the effectiveness of labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite opaque automated systems and few formal channels for participation, YouTubers navigate algorithmic governance on the platform through a strategy we call user-generated accountability: the generation of publicity via content creation to reveal failures, oversights, or harmful policies. Through an analysis of 250 videos, we identify common strategies, concerns, and targets of accountability. Creators primarily upload vlogs that acknowledge the platform's positive aspects, even as they express concern with YouTube's policies, automated enforcement systems, poor communication practices, and discrimination against certain creators or content. In publicizing critiques of platform operations, videos enroll creators and audiences as active stakeholders in platform governance that can coordinate actions to draw the company's attention to matters of concern. We argue that user-generated accountability practices offer a productive starting point for understanding how platform governance disputes come to be and how systems might be shaped or rebuilt to better serve the needs of competing stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: Agrifood platforms are now part of consumption habits. They have emerged in various forms, and we need to describe this diversity to understand better how platforms manage their relationships with farmers. We aim to understand the governance forms of agrifood platforms and consider whether they comply with the principles of transaction cost economics (TCE). Design/methodology/approach: Based on a survey of 103 French platform managers, a two-step cluster analysis and ordered logit regressions were applied to test hypotheses derived from the theory. Findings: The results enable us to propose a refined typology of eight governance forms for the farmer-platform relationship. These different forms can be classified according to a continuum ranging from "market to hierarchy", conforming to TCE principles. We define a gradient describing how the platforms manage their relations with the farmers through contractual and relational control. We show that specific assets, behavioural uncertainty, and membership in a platform network are associated with more integrated governance forms. Practical implications: The article describes the different forms of platform governance and their relevance to market conditions. This clarification is necessary for farmers to elect the more suitable platform and for platform managers to create a new business or improve its efficiency. Originality/value: This article is the first to offer a detailed typology of agrifood platform governance. It highlights these governance characteristics and their relationship with transaction attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual content captures attention, is easy to understand, and is more likely to be remembered. However, it is not limited to conveying informative content; it can also be used to propagate hate. While existing research has predominantly focused on textual hate speech, this study aims to address a research gap by analyzing the characteristics of visual hate, including its channels, intensity, sources, and targets, through a standardized manual content analysis. The hate images were collected through the citizen science approach of data donation. Findings highlight that transgender individuals and migrants are the primary targets of visual hate. It reveals a presence of hate images not only on communication platforms but also in various intermediaries and journalistic media. Half of these images use factual or humorous methods to discriminate against individuals or groups, while an equal number adopt a highly aggressive tone. The study suggests governance measures to combat this issue effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, capital has employed varied methods, both discursive and material, to bypass regulatory frictions. Regulatory arbitrage is one such corporate tactic; it leverages more favorable regulatory regimes in one jurisdiction or category to avoid stricter regulation in another, thus reducing regulatory costs. While regulatory arbitrage underpins much of the gig economy's development, it has received scant attention in critical studies of digital media. Using mixed methods of documentary research and expert interviews, this article examines the regulatory arbitrage strategy that the Chinese social media giant ByteDance deploys in its global expansion and sheds light on the intricate tech politics occurring between the firm and national regulators. Rather than interpreting ByteDance's global foray through the prevailing geopolitical lens, which often posits a simplistic, antagonistic framework, this article demonstrates how the firm manages and adapts its structure to exploit more lenient regulatory regimes outside of China, such as that in the US. This allows ByteDance to reach deeper into the global market and avoid potential breaches of China's internal political economic control. Consequently, the article emphasizes the cunning, resilient nature of capital and the complexity and intricacies in global flows of capital, characteristics often overlooked in an increasingly geopolitically charged world, and it considers their implications for platform governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much scholarship across the humanities and social sciences seek to shed light on the intersection of far-right politics and social media platforms. Yet, scholars tend to focus on racist actors and the ideological underpinnings of platform policies while the contingencies that shape the experiences of content reviewers who make decisions about racist content remain underexamined. This article fills this gap by exploring such contingencies from a linguistic anthropological perspective. Drawing on Facebook moderators' stories, I illustrate the factors adjacent to, and beyond, ideology that animate the adjudication of racist hate speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through this brief commentary piece, I discuss the challenges and opportunities of submitting academic work on hidden forms of content moderation such as shadowbanning and malicious flagging, and the difficulty of balancing dated notions of academic rigour with investigating an issue that is often connected with an absence of data from powerful stakeholders. In doing so, I address how peer review can inadvertently reinforce the inequalities of content moderation, aiding platform companies in the discrediting, victim-blaming and gaslighting of their users by replicating unequal and patriarchal behaviours adopted by various authorities when victims come forward to report violence and injustice, while also rejecting the benefits of taking user experience into account when designing and governing social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deplatforming of sexual content has increased across social media, usually operationalized by commercially charged, and algorithmically enforced, platform policies. This paper extends work on the algorithmic deplatforming of sex through the case study of how sex education content, or ‘sex edutainment’ on YouTube, is impacted by the platform’s algorithmic structures. Enrolling actor-network theory, we demonstrate the delegation work YouTube enacts through algorithms by presenting empirical findings from a multi-method study examining the assemblage of YouTube, sex edutainment influencers, and young people. The findings highlight that despite YouTube’s curated platform imaginary as an amplifier of voices, algorithmic delegation of platform governance creates significant barriers for influencers creating sex edutainment on YouTube. Although not contravening YouTube’s policies, influencers regularly battle demonetization, age-restrictions and algorithmic bias. This undermines the benefits of sex edutainment by limiting access to content, creates precarious financial environments for influencers and risks erosion of audience trust. Meanwhile, algorithms designed to protect users enact this governance without adequately protecting influencers themselves, predominantly women and LGBTQ+ individuals, from harm. Despite YouTube’s veneer of democratization, the social discourses and protectionist narratives that have destabilized traditional sex education efforts permeate our digital environments and can be seen in the algorithmic enactment of YouTube’s policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the surge of interest in platform cooperatives, we have a limited understanding of the dynamics of platform worker‐member participation in these cooperatives. Drawing on interviews with 21 senior leaders and founders of platform worker cooperatives, we investigate the dynamics of platform worker‐member participation, finding that these cooperatives experience some successes and many challenges. We then build theory about how four distinct features of platform worker cooperatives—the facilitation of multihoming, the physically untethered nature of work, the relatively high importance of scale as a strategic imperative, and the relatively low importance of initial platform worker‐member investment—influence these participation dynamics. We find that the platform and worker cooperative organisational models are in tension with one another when brought together within a platform worker cooperative, leading to positive and negative effects on participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centering on social media's public- and profit-oriented nature, this study theorizes how social media users are empowered and constrained when participating in platform governance through user-initiated expressions on platforms. The empirical analysis focuses on user responses before and after Elon Musk's official acquisition of Twitter, utilizing cluster analysis and topic modeling to examine the volume and content of related discourses among different Twitter user groups. Our results point to user constraint in platform governance. Although a diverse set of users, such as partisans, bots, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, spoke up, they had diverging and sometimes conflicting objectives; and partisans dominated the conversations. There was an upsurge in user volume and activity level post-acquisition among liberal users, whose critical voices on platform governance might have bolstered platform business. Potential bots also increased in volume and amplified political topics. Our findings shed light on the challenges of user-driven platform governance, underscoring the complex interplay between platform users, economy, and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite social media companies' public commitments to do good, they regularly face international criticism. This article explores how platforms engage in corporate public relations campaigns to negotiate social and political responsibilities. Through a qualitative analysis of the values promoted in the social initiative TikTok for Good, I show how TikTok promotes messages that amplify positivity, minimize negativity, and focus on individual well-being, while consistently assigning responsibility to other actors. Together, these strategies allow TikTok to symbolically empower users while maintaining control. I conceptualize these strategies that downplay and distance a company from conflicts associated with struggles over power as depoliticization by platforms. This study highlights platform companies' soft forms of governance and demonstrates how the analysis of platform values allows researchers to cut through the strategic vagueness of claims to do good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a platform society, the realization of the public value of platforms is not only affected by goals constructed based on national interest but also closely related to the rights and interests of platform users. In this context, how a platform mediates between the interests of a country, its users, and its businesses becomes a topic worthy of discussion. Through participatory observation and in-depth interviews, this study reveals that online platforms strategically transfer public values that enjoy national policy support and have a broad popular base into their ecosystems, employing techniques such as bridging different parties, gamification management, and the masking effect to produce green users. The findings reveal the unique logic of contemporary China's platform-driven environmental protection practices and mainstream value cultivation while also highlighting the conflicts and contradictions inherent in realizing public values. This study provides a valuable perspective for understanding the Chinese platform society in terms of public value realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Blockchains have inspired imaginaries of a new iteration of the internet, hailed as Web3, where the power of centralized platform companies would be limited and the ownership of personal data and content could be retained by their individual owners and creators. Web3 is expected to facilitate the emergence of novel protocols and platforms that enable decentralized coordination of data and digital assets. This article examines critically the experiences and imaginaries of creators working on two blockchain-based video-sharing platforms: Theta.tv and Odysee. Building on the studies of creator culture and institutionalist blockchain economics and based on open-ended interviews with the early adopters of these platforms, the paper investigates how the creators experience these decentralized social media applications in terms of their processes of governance, community creation, and career development. We show how the affordances of blockchains and creator expectations can result in further convergence of community management and career-building functions potentially benefiting creators. We also show that the new wave of decentralization, against optimistic blockchain visions, has not yet led to the distributed 'ownership' of social media networks. Rather, while blockchains seem to have increased creator autonomy and added career opportunities, novel forms of platform governance and power have also introduced new perceptions of precarity among creators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who governs—and who should govern—online communication? Social media companies, international organizations, users, or the state? And by what means? A range of rhetorical devices have been used to simplify the complexities associated with the governance of online platforms. This includes "constitutional metaphors": metaphorical allusions to traditional political concepts such as statehood, democracy, and constitutionalism. Here, we empirically trace the ascent of a powerful constitutional metaphor currently employed in the news media discourse on platform governance: characterizations of Facebook's Oversight Board (OB) as a "supreme court." We investigate the metaphor's descriptive suitability and question its normative and political ramifications. We argue that uncritical characterizations of the OB as Facebook's "supreme court" obscure its true scope and purpose. In addition, we argue that appropriating the socio-cultural symbolism and hence political legitimacy of a supreme court and mapping it onto a different type of actor poses a threat to responsible platform governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversies surrounding social media platforms have provided opportunities for institutional reflexivity amongst users and regulators on how to understand and govern platforms. Amidst contestation, platform companies have continued to enact projects that draw upon existing modes of privatized governance. We investigate how social media companies have attempted to achieve closure by continuing to set the terms around platform governance. We investigate two projects implemented by Facebook (Meta)—authenticity regulation and privacy controls—in response to the Russian Interference and Cambridge Analytica controversies surrounding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Drawing on Goffman’s metaphor of stage management, we analyze the techniques deployed by Facebook to reinforce a division between what is visible and invisible to the user experience. These platform governance projects propose to act upon front-stage data relations: information that users can see from other users—whether that is content that users can see from “bad actors”, or information that other users can see about oneself. At the same time, these projects relegate back-stage data relations—information flows between users constituted by recommendation and targeted advertising systems—to invisibility and inaction. As such, Facebook renders the user experience actionable for governance, while foreclosing governance of back-stage data relations central to the economic value of the platform. As social media companies continue to perform platform governance projects following controversies, our paper invites reflection on the politics of these projects. By destabilizing the boundaries drawn by platform companies, we open space for continuous reflexivity on how platforms should be understood and governed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst company denials, public interest in 'shadowbans' has grown. Without notifying the creator, 'shadowbans' limit the visibility of user-generated content. Shadowbans can be an effective content moderation technique, although they are subject to the same policy concerns. Existing research has focused on technologically demonstrating shadowbans, while other research has focused on people's experiences, including how social media users use the word 'shadowban' to call for platform accountability. However, less research has focused on media discourses. Thus, I ask: what does 'shadowban' do in search engine results? Using Search Engine Discourse Analysis (SEDA) of 107 search engine results, I argue that when incorporated into media discourses returned via search engine, 'shadowban' maintains existing power dynamics through attributions of agency, strategically managing conflict, and producing markets, all of which have the potential to shape policy debates. Future discussions of 'shadowbans' should critically attend to power differentials in the public sphere. Moreover, if governance is legitimized through media, this article demonstrates how critical analysis of how media sources frame platform governance is an important line of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines civil society engagement with the 2016–2020 Airbnb and Facebook civil rights audits as counterpublic strategies to address discriminatory harms on platforms. Drawing on critical theories of (counter)publics, care work, and civil rights, we explore (1) civil society organizations' negotiations with various stakeholders in the audits, (2) the perceived utility of the audits as a platform governance mechanism, and (3) motivations behind using a civil rights framework for auditing platforms. Based on interviews and textual analysis, we find that civil society used dualistic strategies, working with and against platforms to navigate corporate and government neglect of digital harms to marginalized communities and negotiate asymmetric power structures. Groups used the audits to urge platforms to respect civil rights law while asking them to address areas beyond the existing law. They also mobilized the audits to achieve immediate 'harm reduction' from the platforms while simultaneously advocating for government regulation by demonstrating the audits' limitations. In the process, the civil society counterpublic faced challenges from the externalization of responsibility by platforms and the co-option and politicization of civil rights. As a result, we argue, the utility of the audits may ultimately lie in how their limitations and failure can be used by counterpublics to rearticulate responsibility for harm to marginalized communities in platform governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disputes over transactions on two-sided platforms are common and usually arbitrated through platforms' customer service departments or third-party service providers. This paper studies crowd-judging, a novel crowdsourcing mechanism whereby users (buyers and sellers) volunteer as jurors to decide disputes arising from the platform. Using a rich data set from the dispute resolution center at Taobao, a leading Chinese e-commerce platform, we aim to understand this innovation and propose and analyze potential operational improvements with a focus on in-group bias (buyer jurors favor the buyer, likewise for sellers). Platform users, especially sellers, share the perception that in-group bias is prevalent and systematically sways case outcomes as the majority of users on such platforms are buyers, undermining the legitimacy of crowd-judging. Our empirical findings suggest that such concern is not completely unfounded: on average, a seller juror is approximately 10% likelier (than a buyer juror) to vote for a seller. Such bias is aggravated among cases that are decided by a thin margin and when jurors perceive that their in-group's interests are threatened. However, the bias diminishes as jurors gain experience: a user's bias reduces by nearly 95% as experience grows from zero to the sample median level. Incorporating these findings and juror participation dynamics in a simulation study, the paper delivers three managerial insights. First, under the existing voting policy, in-group bias influences the outcomes of no more than 2% of cases. Second, simply increasing crowd size through either a larger case panel or aggressively recruiting new jurors may not be efficient in reducing the adverse effect of in-group bias. Finally, policies that allocate cases dynamically could simultaneously mitigate the impact of in-group bias and nurture a more sustainable juror pool. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management. Funding: S. A. Yang and A. Zhang acknowledge the support of the Hong Kong General Research Fund [Grant "Decentralizing Platform Governance: Innovations from China; Project 17614921]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4818. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform governance scholarship commonly derives the role of the state from its actions as a regulator of platforms: a rule-setter that sets limits and restricts their activities. This article argues that three additional state roles enable and constrain the agency of states to regulate platforms: facilitator, buyer, and producer. Using the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act as a case study, the article asks: How do different state roles in platform governance shape AI's regulatory geographies? It answers this research question by outlining two policy dilemmas between those four state roles. First, the EU's ambition to act as a facilitator of digital markets constrains its scope of interventions as a regulator of platforms. Second, the EU's deficits in acting as a producer of AI infrastructure exacerbate its dependency as a buyer of Big Tech offerings, especially cloud computing services. The article contends that dilemmas between state roles are not anomalies but defining features of state-platform relations. As generative AI systems gain sophistication, an understanding of how state roles relate to each other helps to navigate their complex governance regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations today are shifting toward collaborative forms of value creation and rely on digital technologies to operate interorganizational processes. This has led blockchain technology to gain considerable momentum, given its ability to foster collaboration among multiple actors. Nevertheless, despite its benefits, building a blockchain-based platform requires integrating heterogeneous needs and adapting to decentralized governance structures. This research investigates the successful deployment of a blockchain-based solution for interbank collaboration. Our empirical analysis focuses on the Spunta Banca DLT Project, initiated in 2017 to automate the interbank reconciliation processes in Italy, through the deployment of a permissioned blockchain-based solution. A qualitative analysis of interview data collected from project participants was conducted to gain insights on the process to build a blockchain-based platform for interbank collaboration. The findings of our exploratory case study reveal that successful deployment hinges on a sequential legitimacy-building process, encompassing pragmatic, normative, and cognitive legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how de-platforming and flagging assemble to replicate offline inequalities, making content creators at the margins vulnerable to both online abuse and censorship on Instagram and TikTok. Highlighting gaps in online harms literature surrounding the misuse of this functionality, this paper frames misused or malicious flagging as online abuse through interviews with users who believed they were de-platformed this way, showcasing this practice's emotional and financial impact on targets and creating a framework to identify it through users' gossip. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the considerable regulatory attention directed at sexual content online focuses on platform content moderation policies, but payment and advertising services play a gatekeeping role on platform content as well. In 2021, OnlyFans cited the difficulties of meeting the policies of payment processors and banks in its announcement that the site would stop hosting sexual content. This decision was subsequently retracted under public criticism of the platform for profiting off sex workers and then removing them from the platform. The case of OnlyFans provided a rare reversal of the moral panics that often surround the governance of sexual content online. This article discusses the deplatforming of sex as a case of contested platform governance identifies how public conflicts over platform governance of sexual content fit within broader "no platform" politics, and draws on research from affected communities to make the case for alternative policy approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more and more governments around the world considering or having already passed laws aiming to regulate the relationship between news publishers and online platforms, primarily, by ensuring a form of remuneration of the former from the latter, we ought to understand the current situation. This article seeks to inquire who platforms fund, how and why. We created a dataset of organizations that have participated in Google News Initiative or Facebook Journalism Project by gathering data from communicative and informative material found on the websites of platforms and beneficiaries. Through our analysis, we identified stakeholders that play a crucial role in the realization of platforms' funding programs, whom we call funding intermediaries. Therefore, this article contends that the platforms' strategic decision has not only been to distribute money through a complicated governance structure, but also to target parts of the industry that have been hurt by an ongoing crisis, aggravated by the platforms' dominance of the advertising industry. However, funding journalism ensures neither media capture, i.e., positive or lack of critical coverage, nor regulatory capture, i.e., avoiding or adjusting regulation. As a result, we ultimately propose to approach capture as a political-economic concept to study platform power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines how platform companies seek to lobby and otherwise influence policymakers during heated regulatory episodes. While there has been some valuable recent work on different policy influence strategies deployed by platform firms, in particular the emerging use of “user-facing” tactics of consumer mobilisation, current research tends to neglect the role of specific institutional contexts and related power structures intermediating the exertion of business power. Developing an institutionally situated approach, we offer an analysis of platform policy influence during the Digital Services Act (DSA) negotiations in the EU from 2019-2022. Through an analysis of political science literature on business power and interest group politics, we outline five strategies of corporate policy influence (access lobbying, coalition building, stakeholder mobilisation, public relations, and funding). Drawing on freedom of information requests, the EU Transparency register, and civil society watchdog reporting, we then provide an analysis of how platform firms sought to influence EU policymakers through these strategies around the DSA.

Responding to frustrations with the enforcement of copyright on YouTube, some creators publish videos that discuss their experiences, challenge claims of infringement, and critique broader structures of content moderation. Platform callouts, or public complaints about the conduct of or on platforms, are one of the primary ways creators challenge the power imbalance between users and corporations. Through an analysis of 135 videos, we provide a rich empirical account of how creators publicly define the problem of copyright enforcement, propose solutions, and attribute responsibility to other creators, the platform, and external actors like media conglomerates. Creators criticise the prevalence of “false” copyright claims that ignore fair use or serve ulterior motives like harassment, censorship, and financial extortion, as well as the challenges of communicating with the platform. Drawing inspiration from organisational theory, we differentiate horizontal and vertical callouts according to the institutional positioning of the speaker and target. Horizontal callouts, or public complaints between peers, offer a mechanism for community self-policing, while vertical callouts, or public complaints directed towards organisations, provide a mechanism for influencing centralised content moderation policies and practices. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits and limitations of callouts as a strategy of creator-driven platform governance.

Purpose: This study investigates the operational processes, oversight practices, investor incentives and business impacts in the localization of equity crowdfunding in Indonesia through an exploratory case study of the LandX platform. Design/Methodology/Approach: Qualitative data was collected through interviews with 5 key personnel of LandX and document analysis of 8 internal materials related to operational processes and financial outcomes. Data underwent inductive thematic analysis. Findings: Findings reveal LandX conducts structured due diligence encompassing weighted financial and qualitative criteria that represent industry best practices, balanced by outcome uncertainties. Investor incentives span portfolio diversification to personal passions, requiring tailored communication and education to ensure informed participation. While complying strictly with regulations, LandX also demonstrates responsible self-governance through transparency and protections that exceed policy requirements. Qualitative indications point to accelerated issuer growth, but quantified impact data remains limited. Practical Implications: Results provide insights into prudent navigation required to advance equity crowdfunding in Indonesia through platform diligence and education, calibrated outcome expectations, updated regulations, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Originality/Value: This pioneering study provides timely qualitative insights into equity crowdfunding localization dynamics in the under-examined context of Indonesia. Paper Type: Case Study

Algorithmic transparency is high on the agenda for social media regulation. However, recent work in Science and Technology Studies questions whether this endeavor of “opening the black box” is feasible or even meaningful due to the sociotechnical contingency of platform behavior. To address these shortcomings, Bernhard Rieder and Jeannette Hoffman have proposed a move from algorithmic transparency to platform observability: a pragmatic and sociotechnical perspective aimed at securing structural, real-time access to the means of platform knowledge production. This paper applies the concept of observability to recent legislative developments in the EU’s new Digital Services Act. Reviewing that legislation’s transparency rules demonstrates how familiar algorithmic principles rules are starting to be complemented by innovative new observability policies and how these reflect revised understandings of transparency’s possible subjects, functions, and formats. This review also surfaces normative tensions in observability policy. In terms of substance, observability demands access to content but struggles to discern public from private discourses in semi-public social media channels. In terms of function, observability aims to act as a companion to regulation, but tensions arise between a broad concept of knowledge production and a narrow concept of regulatory compliance monitoring. In terms of format, observability’s drive for infrastructural and real-time access entails new API governance tradeoffs between, for example, scope and scalability. Along these lines, observability paves the way for a more constructive debate around platform data access laws and the dead ends of algorithmic transparency.