Australia's News Media Bargaining Code and the global turn towards platform regulation

Abstract

Governments across the world are struggling to address the market dominance of technology companies through increased regulation. The Australian Federal government found itself leading the world in platform regulation when, in 2021, it enacted the Australian News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. The furore surrounding the introduction of the legislation, and Facebook's subsequent Australian 'news ban' exposed the limits of a regulatory model that has previously left the tech industry to moderate itself. In this paper, we argue the introduction of the Code is a leading example of a global trajectory towards regulatory change, which sees governments move from a reactive regulation model to specific interventions around the governance of digital media spaces. We discuss how best to measure the successes and failures around this more interventionist model through a case study of the implementation of the Code in Australia. More broadly we consider how global platforms have responded, and whether the reform is an effective regulatory model for other national governments to emulate.

The News Media Bargaining Code: Impacts on Australian journalism one year on

“…Much previous research has asserted the power of platforms to transform the technical, social and financial operation of news organisations (Van Dijck & Poell, 2013), however others, such as Meese and Hurcombe (2021) have referred to the structuring nature of this power-that is the impacts of platform power on how news is both defined and delivered. The NMBC has been positioned as a move away from 'reactive regulatory policy' (Bossio et al, 2022), such as recent governmental pressure on platforms to curb disinformation flows on the platform in response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic (Rodrigues & Xu, 2020). Instead, the NMBC is an example of the increasing number of more interventionist policy approaches to platform regulation; from the European Union's focus on application of copyright law (Wilding, 2022), to the more recent focus on competition law to remedy perceived market imbalances, as taken by governments in Australia, Canada and South Africa, amongst others (Bailo et al, 2021).…”

Metaverse through the prism of power and addiction: what will happen when the virtual world becomes more attractive than reality?

“…There are numerous instances that support the idea that tech leaders can carry out their own will despite Bojic European Journal of Futures Research (2022) 10: 22the resistance, which is Max Weber's basic prerequisite for power [62]. For example, this can be seen through their interventions in politics and media sectors [36,37,84]. Additionally, tech leaders often enjoy public thrust and influence that enables them to carry out their own will.…”

“…Additionally, tech leaders often enjoy public thrust and influence that enables them to carry out their own will. For example, this can be seen in the capability of Elon Musk to affect the value of the stock market with a single tweet [85], the power of Twitter to take down the social media profiles of then acting president Donald Trump [36], and the impact of Google and Facebook on Australian media regulations [84]. Social media are viewed as media companies by some researchers, although they somehow skip being affected by media laws [86].…”

The Internet regulation turn? Policy, Internet and technology

“…To Australia, where a world‐first News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code became, according to Bossio et al (2021), a definitive example of global moves from ad hoc regulation and reliance upon global platforms to ‘do the right thing’, toward more interventionist approaches to regulation and governance of digital and social media. In their paper for Policy & Internet , Australia's News Media Bargaining Code and the global turn toward platform regulation (2021), they importantly conclude that ‘the legislation is less about its wording and more about its cumulative weight as a weapon to force payments from the world's biggest technology companies’.…”