IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/telpol/v39y2015i9p761-770.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Internet governance by social media platforms

Author

Listed:
  • DeNardis, L.
  • Hackl, A.M.

Abstract

An emerging area of inquiry in Internet governance scholarship is the role of private information intermediaries in enacting governance via technical design choices and user policies. Following this trajectory, this paper addresses governance by social media rather than governance of social media. Informed by conceptual frameworks from Internet governance and Science and Technology Studies, it examines the extent to which these platforms either promote or constrain rights in three thematic areas: (1) anonymous speech and individual privacy; (2) the ability to express ideas or, stated as a negative liberty, freedom from censorship; and (3) technical affordances of interoperability and permissionless innovation. Because of their unique role as the intermediaries providing citizens with access to the digital public sphere, social media platforms are central points of control on the Internet. Viewing these private platforms through an Internet governance lens, rather than a content lens, suggests that social media technical architectures and policies actually pose several challenges to communication rights as well as to the open Internet. There is an opportunity for Internet governance studies, which have primarily focused on governmental policies and new global institutions, to give greater consideration to the direct policymaking role of private intermediaries and the accompanying phenomenon of the privatization of human rights.

Suggested Citation

  • DeNardis, L. & Hackl, A.M., 2015. "Internet governance by social media platforms," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 761-770.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:telpol:v:39:y:2015:i:9:p:761-770
    DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2015.04.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596115000592
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.04.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kaplan, Andreas M. & Haenlein, Michael, 2010. "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 59-68, January.
    2. Milton L. Mueller, 2002. "Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262134128, December.
    3. Tsang, Eric W. K., 2014. "Old and New," Management and Organization Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(03), pages 390-390, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ruparel, Namita & Dhir, Amandeep & Tandon, Anushree & Kaur, Puneet & Islam, Jamid Ul, 2020. "The influence of online professional social media in human resource management: A systematic literature review," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    2. Grygiel, Jennifer & Brown, Nina, 2019. "Are social media companies motivated to be good corporate citizens? Examination of the connection between corporate social responsibility and social media safety," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 445-460.
    3. Gray, Joanne Elizabeth, 2021. "The geopolitics of "platforms": The TikTok challenge," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 10(2), pages 1-26.
    4. Hongyang He & Bin Zhang, 2022. "Effective Synergy of Market Agents: The Core of Achieving Multi-Agent Governance on the Internet Platform," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-20, December.
    5. Rizki Briandana & Caturida Meiwanto Doktoralina & Shahir Akram Hassan & Wan Norhaniza Wan Hasan, 2020. "Da’wah Communication and Social Media: The Interpretation of Millennials in Southeast Asia," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(Special 1), pages 216-226.
    6. El Hana, Nadr & Mercanti-Guérin, Maria & Sabri, Ouidade, 2023. "Cookiepocalypse: What are the most effective strategies for advertisers to reshape the future of display advertising?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    7. Haenschen, Katherine & Wolf, Jordan, 2019. "Disclaiming responsibility: How platforms deadlocked the Federal Election Commission's efforts to regulate digital political advertising," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(8), pages 1-1.
    8. Radu, Roxana & Kettemann, Matthias C. & Meyer, Trisha & Shahin, Jamal, 2021. "Normfare: Norm entrepreneurship in internet governance," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(6).
    9. Epstein, Dmitry & Katzenbach, Christian & Musiani, Francesca, 2016. "Doing internet governance: practices, controversies, infrastructures, and institutions," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 5(3), pages 1-14.
    10. Jia, Lianrui & Ruan, Lotus, 2020. "Going global: Comparing Chinese mobile applications' data and user privacy governance at home and abroad," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 9(3), pages 1-22.
    11. Kerr, Aphra & Musiani, Francesca & Pohle, Julia, 2019. "Editorial – Communication and internet policy: a critical rights-based history and future," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-16.
    12. Gorwa, Robert, 2019. "What is Platform Governance?," SocArXiv fbu27, Center for Open Science.
    13. Kerr, Aphra & Musiani, Francesca & Pohle, Julia, 2019. "Editorial – Communication and internet policy: a critical rights-based history and future," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 8(1), pages 1-16.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kristine KIRAKOSYAN, 2014. "The Managerial View Of Social Media Usage In Banking Industry:Case Study For Romanian Banking System," Proceedings of the INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 8(1), pages 225-241, November.
    2. Isidoropaolo Casteltrione & Magda Pieczka, 2018. "Mediating the contributions of Facebook to political participation in Italy and the UK: the role of media and political landscapes," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Ali Shalizar Jalali, 2018. "Male Fertility as a Bull’s Eye for Mastocytosis," Global Journal of Reproductive Medicine, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 3(3), pages 58-60, February.
    4. Fan, Rui & Xu, Ke & Zhao, Jichang, 2018. "An agent-based model for emotion contagion and competition in online social media," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 495(C), pages 245-259.
    5. Nour El Houda Ben Amor & Mohamed Nabil Mzoughi, 2023. "Do Millennials’ Motives for Using Snapchat Influence the Effectiveness of Snap Ads?," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, July.
    6. Schmidt, Christoph G. & Wuttke, David A. & Heese, H. Sebastian & Wagner, Stephan M., 2023. "Antecedents of public reactions to supply chain glitches," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    7. Hui Yan & Guixiang Liu, 2021. "Fire’s Effects on Grassland Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-15, October.
    8. Mahan, Joseph E. & Seo, Won Jae & Jordan, Jeremy S. & Funk, Daniel, 2015. "Exploring the impact of social networking sites on running involvement, running behavior, and social life satisfaction," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 182-192.
    9. Thomas M. Lenard & Lawrence J. White,, 2009. "ICANN at a Crossroads: A Proposal for Better Governance and Performance," Working Papers 09-07, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    10. Michal Plaček & Martin Schmidt & František Ochrana & Michal Půček, 2017. "Do the Selected Characteristics of Public Tenders Affect the Likelihood of Filing Petitions with the Regulators of Public Tenders?," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2017(3), pages 317-329.
    11. Molina, Arturo & Fernández, Alejandra C. & Gómez, Mar & Aranda, Evangelina, 2017. "Differences in the city branding of European capitals based on online vs. offline sources of information," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 28-39.
    12. Carmela Milano, 2015. "Democratization or else vulgarization of cultural capital? The role of social networks in theater’s audience behavior," Working Papers CEB 15-004, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Yucheng Zhang & Zhiling Wang & Lin Xiao & Lijun Wang & Pei Huang, 2023. "Discovering the evolution of online reviews: A bibliometric review," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 33(1), pages 1-22, December.
    14. Hassan Danaeefard & Ali Farazmand & Akram Dastyari, 2023. "The Iranian Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-9) Crisismanship: Understanding the Contributions of National Culture, Media, Technology and Economic System," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 1661-1682, December.
    15. Richey, Michelle & Ravishankar, M.N., 2019. "The role of frames and cultural toolkits in establishing new connections for social media innovation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 325-333.
    16. Jamal El-Den & Pratap Adikhari & Pratap Adikhari, 2017. "Social media in the service of social entrepreneurship: Identifying factors for better services," Journal of Advances in Humanities and Social Sciences, Dr. Yi-Hsing Hsieh, vol. 3(2), pages 105-114.
    17. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    18. Smith, Andrew N. & Fischer, Eileen & Yongjian, Chen, 2012. "How Does Brand-related User-generated Content Differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter?," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 102-113.
    19. Bo Yang & Chao Liu & Xusen Cheng & Xi Ma, 2022. "Understanding Users' Group Behavioral Decisions About Sharing Articles in Social Media: An Elaboration Likelihood Model Perspective," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 819-842, August.
    20. Gal-Tzur, Ayelet & Grant-Muller, Susan M. & Kuflik, Tsvi & Minkov, Einat & Nocera, Silvio & Shoor, Itay, 2014. "The potential of social media in delivering transport policy goals," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 115-123.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:telpol:v:39:y:2015:i:9:p:761-770. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.