What is platform governance?

Following a host of high-profile scandals, the political influence of platform companies (the global corporations 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 being pursued in Europe and beyond, a better understanding is needed of how platform practices, policies, and affordances (how platforms govern) interact with external political forces trying to shape those practices and policies. Building on digital media and communication scholarship as well as governance literature from political science and international relations, this article maps 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.

Robert Gorwa