Between coordination and regulation: Finding the governance in Internet governance

Hofmann, Jeanette; Katzenbach, Christian; Gollatz, Kirsten

doi:10.1177/1461444816639975

Cited by 187 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Thus, following recent theoretical contributions we apply a broader concept of governance as ordering . Specifically, we propose to understand platform governance as reflexive coordination (Hofmann et al, 2016) -integrating diverse modes of ordering (terms of service, public debate, algorithms) but focusing on controversies and those critical moments when routine activities become object of contestation and need to be revised. This enables us to understand platform governance as an encompassing social process that is not only exercised by platforms and regulatory agencies.…”

Section: Theorizing Platform Governance As Reflexive Coordinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Katzenbach¹,

Gollatz²

2020

Preprint

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Digital platforms have become dominant players in contemporary societies by positioning themselves as key sites for social communication and transactions. While there is already a growing body of research on specific aspects of platform governance (algorithms, content moderation, policies), there is still only little theoretical grounding of these debates in social theory. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a concept of platform governance based on institutional theory that understands governance as reflexive coordination, and thus different from regulation. Such a concept promises instructive insights into different forms of mediating communication and transactions by platforms. In the second part of the paper, we apply this concept to content moderation and regulation on Facebook. This empirical part is based on a study of the evolving policies and practices with regard to handling controversial content (nudity, hate speech, fake news) on the platform over a timeframe of 10 years. This is contextualised with a discourse analysis of public debates and policy proposals on these issues.

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Section: Theorizing Platform Governance As Reflexive Coordinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Katzenbach¹,

Gollatz²

2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…A number of authors, some of whom with STS sensibilities but overall coming from a broader disciplinary spectrum, have examined in recent years how the concept and the practice of Internet governance may be reconsidered in light of an increasing number of informal uses, practices, norms that affect the distribution and the exercise of suggests that the definition of governance may go as far as including "decision making with constitutive (structural) effect whether it takes place within the public or private sectors, and formally or informally" (Braman, 2009). Governance, according to Hofmann et al (2016) may even be just a "side effect of actions with non-governancerelated aims".…”

Section: Sts Approaches To Internet Governance: a Focus On "Mundane Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Standardising by running code”: the Signal protocol andde factostandardisation in end-to-end encrypted messaging

Ermoshina¹,

Musiani²

2019

Internet Histories

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Ksenia Ermoshina (PhD, MINES ParisTech) is a postdoctoral researcher at an Associate Researcher at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on information operations within the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict, including digital threats to journalists and civil society organizations, Internet censorship, and surveillance. Her previous work as a postdoctoral fellow with the NEXTLEAP research project studied the usage and development of end-to-end encrypted messaging and email protocols and clients. Ksenia will join the ranks of 's revelations, encryption of online communications at a large scale and in a usable manner has become a matter of public concern. The most advanced and popular among recently-developed encryption protocols is currently the Signal protocol. While the Signal protocol is widely adopted and considered as an improvement over previous ones, it remains officially unstandardized, even though there is an informal draft elaborated towards that goal. The analysis of how this protocol was introduced and swiftly adopted by various applications, and of subsequent transformations of the encrypted messaging ecosystem, sheds light on how a particular period in the history of secure messaging has been marked by a "de facto standardization". What can we learn about existing modes of governance of encryption and the histories of traditional standardization bodies, when analyzing the approach of "standardization by running code" adopted by Signal? And finally, how does the Signal protocol challenge a "linear", evolution-based vision of messaging history? Drawing from a three-year qualitative investigation of end-to-end encrypted messaging, from a perspective informed by science and technology studies (STS), we seek to unveil the ensemble of processes that make the Signal protocol a quasi-standard. West, 2018). Alongside the turning of encryption into a full-fledged political issue, the Snowden revelations catalyzed long-standing debates within the field of secure messaging protocols. The cryptography community (in particular, academic and free software collectives) renewed their efforts to create next-generation secure messaging protocols in order to overcome the limits of existing protocols, such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and OTR (Off-the-Record Messaging). As next-generation encryption is shaping the ways in which we can securely communicate, exchange, store content on the Internet, it is important to unveil the recent and less-recent history of these protocols and their key applications, to understand how the opportunities and constraints they provide to Internet users came about, and how both developer communities and institutions are working towards making them available for the largest numbers.One of the leading motivations behind this effort consisted in facilitating key exchange and key verification processes1, previously identified as the main obstacles to mass adoption of encryption (Whitten & Tygar, 1999). The most advanced and popular of these n...

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“…In particular, Actor-Network theory treats everything in the social and natural worlds as "a continuously generated effect of the webs of relations within which they are located" (Law 2008, p. 141) and focuses on the associations, assemblages, networks of actors that cross-cut human/non-human, public/private, local/global and formal/informal dichotomies (Schouten 2014). Not surprisingly, STS and ANT have been increasingly employed in governance of technology and Internet governance research (among the others, Musiani 2014; Mayer and Acuto 2015;Müller 2015;Hofmann et al 2016;Epstein et al 2016). However, few studies on security issues have adopted an approach derived from STS or ANT (Schouten 2014;Binder 2016).…”

Section: Summary Of Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Smart cities, social media platforms and security: online content regulation as a site of controversy and conflict

Poletti

Michieli

2018

City Territ Archit

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Smart, technologically managed city-regions are one of the main characteristics of the contemporary world. Since the attack to the Charlie Hebdo offices, city-regions and social media digital technologies have increasingly been changing the definition of 'territory of security' and 'security governance' . What are the characteristics of the security architecture created by the interaction of smart city-regions and digital technologies? Drawing from Actor-Network theory and Science and Technology Studies, we provide an empirical account of the shape of this new territory, by presenting a study of the controversy concerning security and social media in UK, the role of cities in this changed security space, and how social sciences can help better understand and respond to the opportunities and threats of smart cities. which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. ReferencesAbrahamsen R, Leander A (eds) (2015) Routledge handbook of private security studies. Routledge, London Adamson FB (2016) Spaces of global security: beyond methodological nationalism. J Glob Secur Stud 1(1):19-35 Barry A (2001) Political machines: governing a technological society. Athlone, London Barry A (2013) The translation zone: between actor-network theory and international relations. Millenium J Int Stud 41(3):413-429 Baya-Laffite N (2017) Moving beyond the digitalised and natively digital divide? Mapping climate policy debates in multiple spaces. In: Paper presented at the 3rd international conference on public policy (ICPP3) June 28-30, 2017, Singapore

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Between coordination and regulation: Finding the governance in Internet governance

Cited by 187 publications

References 52 publications

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

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

“Standardising by running code”: the Signal protocol andde factostandardisation in end-to-end encrypted messaging

Smart cities, social media platforms and security: online content regulation as a site of controversy and conflict

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