IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v62y2024i5p1395-1407.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regulating Disinformation and Big Tech in the EU: A Research Agenda on the Institutional Strategies, Public Spheres and Analytical Challenges

Author

Listed:
  • Luis Bouza García
  • Alvaro Oleart

Abstract

The growing influence of social media platforms, and the disinformation that circulates in them, has transformed the public spheres. How to deal with disinformation is an open normative, empirical and political question in contemporary democracies. In this article, we outline an agenda on the institutional strategies pursued in the European Union (EU), the normative understandings of the public sphere that such strategies imply, and the analytical challenges to undertake this line of inquiry. We argue that there is an emerging competition in the EU field of disinformation – constructed by actors coming from different pre‐existing fields, such as journalism or foreign policy – not only to define what is ‘true’ from what is ‘fake’, but also to determine the sort of the public sphere and democracy we ought to strive for. This perspective allows us to anticipate which actors might be empowered (or disempowered) depending on how disinformation is addressed in regulatory terms.

Suggested Citation

  • Luis Bouza García & Alvaro Oleart, 2024. "Regulating Disinformation and Big Tech in the EU: A Research Agenda on the Institutional Strategies, Public Spheres and Analytical Challenges," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(5), pages 1395-1407, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:62:y:2024:i:5:p:1395-1407
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13548
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13548
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jcms.13548?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alvaro Oleart & Luis Bouza, 2018. "Democracy at Stake: Multipositional Actors and Politicization in the EU Civil Society Field," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 870-887, May.
    2. Gorwa, Robert, 2019. "What is Platform Governance?," SocArXiv fbu27, Center for Open Science.
    3. Dennis Broeders & Fabio Cristiano & Monica Kaminska, 2023. "In Search of Digital Sovereignty and Strategic Autonomy: Normative Power Europe to the Test of Its Geopolitical Ambitions," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(5), pages 1261-1280, September.
    4. repec:osf:socarx:fbu27_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Alvaro Oleart & Luis Bouza, 2018. "Democracy at Stake: Multipositional Actors and Politicization in the EU Civil Society Field," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/273672, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Charlotte Wagnsson & Maria Hellman, 2018. "Normative Power Europe Caving In? EU under Pressure of Russian Information Warfare," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(5), pages 1161-1177, July.
    7. John W. Cioffi & Martin F. Kenney & John Zysman, 2022. "Platform power and regulatory politics: Polanyi for the twenty-first century," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 820-836, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Luis Bouza García & Alvaro Oleart, 2023. "Regulating Disinformation and Big Tech in the EU: A Research Agenda on the Institutional Strategies, Public Spheres and Analytical Challenges," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/365881, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Gabriel Siles-Brügge & Michael Strange, 2020. "National Autonomy or Transnational Solidarity? Using Multiple Geographic Frames to Politicize EU Trade Policy," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 277-289.
    3. Jayeon Lindellee & Roberto Scaramuzzino, 2020. "Can EU Civil Society Elites Burst the Brussels Bubble? Civil Society Leaders’ Career Trajectories," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 86-96.
    4. Jayeon Lindellee & Roberto Scaramuzzino, 2020. "Can EU Civil Society Elites Burst the Brussels Bubble? Civil Society Leaders’ Career Trajectories," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 86-96.
    5. Angela Garcia Calvo & Martin Kenney & John Zysman, 2023. "Understanding work in the online platform economy: the narrow, the broad, and the systemic perspectives," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 32(4), pages 795-814.
    6. Sebastian Heidebrecht, 2024. "From Market Liberalism to Public Intervention: Digital Sovereignty and Changing European Union Digital Single Market Governance," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 205-223, January.
    7. Gala, Kaushik & Schwab, Andreas & Mueller, Brandon A., 2024. "Star entrepreneurs on digital platforms: Heavy-tailed performance distributions and their generative mechanisms," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 39(1).
    8. Alvaro Oleart & Julia Rone, 2025. "Reversing the Privatisation of the Public Sphere: Democratic Alternatives to the EU’s Regulation of Disinformation," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 13.
    9. Anna Davies & Betsy Donald & Mia Gray, 2023. "The power of platforms—precarity and place," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 16(2), pages 245-256.
    10. Gorwa, Robert, 2019. "The platform governance triangle: conceptualising the informal regulation of online content," SocArXiv tgnrj, Center for Open Science.
    11. Katarzyna Gruszka & Manuel Scholz-Wäckerle & Ernest Aigner, 2020. "Planetary carambolage: The evolutionary political economy of technology, nature and work," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 273-293, November.
    12. Wu, Mian & Liu, Yulong & Chung, Henry F.L. & Guo, Shoujia, 2022. "When and how mobile payment platform complementors matter in cross-border B2B e-commerce ecosystems? An integration of process and modularization analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 843-854.
    13. Gorwa, Robert, 2019. "The platform governance triangle: conceptualising the informal regulation of online content," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 8(2), pages 1-22.
    14. Alexander Oluka, 2024. "The impact of digital platforms on traditional market structures," Technology audit and production reserves, PC TECHNOLOGY CENTER, vol. 2(4(76)), pages 21-29, April.
    15. Sanna Malinen, 2021. "Boundary Control as Gatekeeping in Facebook Groups," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(4), pages 73-81.
    16. Hyungjun Seo & Seunghwan Myeong, 2021. "Determinant Factors for Adoption of Government as a Platform in South Korea: Mediating Effects on the Perception of Intelligent Information Technology," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-20, September.
    17. Torrent-Sellens, Joan, 2024. "Digital transition, data-and-tasks crowd-based economy, and the shared social progress: Unveiling a new political economy from a European perspective," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    18. Peng, Hui & Lu, Yaobin & Gupta, Sumeet, 2023. "Promoting value emergence through digital platform ecosystems: Perspectives on resource integration in China," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    19. Hofmann, Jeanette & Kersting, Norbert & Ritzi, Claudia & Schünemann, Wolf J., 2019. "Politikwissenschaft und die digitale Gesellschaft," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 9-23.
    20. Konrad Degen & Alexander Gleiss, 2025. "Time to break up? The case for tailor-made digital platform regulation based on platform-governance standard types," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 35(1), pages 1-23, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bla:jcmkts:v:62:y:2024:i:5:p:1395-1407. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    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.