Parliaments for the platforms? – University of Innsbruck
Especially in times when a billionaire wants to buy Twitter, the question arises as to who should decide about freedom and justice in the social networks. Together with the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans Bredow Institute (HBI) The Institute for Theory and Future of Law at the University of Innsbruck is starting a new project on democratic rule-making in the age of large internet platforms.
Who decides what hate speech is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok? Who decides whether Russian television stations or (ex-)US presidents are allowed to be present on these platforms? And who fought disinformation?
The participation of the citizens in the rules, what can be said, has been a central demand and great achievement of many democratic revolutions. But what about our participation in communication-related decisions on digital platforms, to which significant parts of our public discourse have shifted? Prof. Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann, head of the Institute for Theory and Future of Law at the University of Innsbruck and head of the research project, explains: “Platforms themselves have become rule-setters, rule-enforcers and judges of their decisions. Separation of powers and separation looks different. This leads to tensions in the social discourse fabric. This is where we want to start.” David Alders, project manager in the field of digital society at Stiftung Mercator, adds: “How we deal with the power of platforms is a central question of our time. The German traffic light coalition has announced that it will advance the establishment of platform councils. So far, however, there are no mature concepts of what exactly such bodies could look like. The project will change that.”
The questions that stand out against this background are as significant as they are topical: How could the normative foundations and socio-technical practices of private content regulation (content governance) be revised in order to align the discourse rules on platforms with public values (btw: which ones?) to secure? Is it necessary for “representatives of state and civil society bodies as well as (…) users (…) to participate in decisions on principles and procedures for curating content”, as the German Academies of Science recently called for? And how exactly should the geographical area of responsibility of an institution to be created for this purpose be tailored: national, regional or global? Should the advisory councils be platform specific or industry wide? Who exactly should they involve and how – experts, users, affected non-users, citizens?
These questions are now to be clarified in a global review of existing models of social feedback from private and hybrid norm systems. In four regional research clinics and studies, one world region and its experiences with the reconciliation of private orders will be examined, in order to then, in a concluding policy paper, make a coherent proposal for the optimal design of institutions and processes for the increased legitimacy of private and hybrid norm orders give. The scientific findings are to be translated into a design proposal in dialogue with representatives from politics and administration.
The PLATTFORM://DEMOKRACIE project is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans Bredow Institute (Hamburg) with the support of the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (Berlin) and the Institute for Theory and Future of Law at the University of Innsbruck. The project is funded by the Mercator Foundation.