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Thursday, November 10
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PP 010
From Contested to Shared Responsibility: Online Platforms and the Transformation of Publicness
T. Poell
1
, J. Pierson
2
, N. Helberger
3
1
University of Amsterdam, Department of Media Studies, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, iMinds-SMIT, Brussels, Belgium
3
University of Amsterdam, Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Online platforms, from Facebook to YouTube, and from PatientsLikeMe to Coursera, have become deeply involved in a wide range of public activities,
including journalism, civic engagement, policing, health care, and education. As such, they have started to play a vital role in the realization of important
public values and policy objectives associated with these activities: freedom of expression, public discourse, consumer protection, and the accessibility to
basic public services. This paper develops a conceptual framework for the governance of the increasingly central involvement of platforms in public space.
Throughout the twentieth century, state institutions were primarily responsible for the organization of public space and for safeguarding public value. This
societal arrangement has come under growing pressure as a result of economic liberalization and privatization of public institutions and services. The rapid
rise of online platforms both accelerates and further complicates this development. These platforms appear to facilitate public activity with very little aid
of public institutions. As such they are celebrated as instruments of the‘participatory society’and the‘sharing economy’. Most platforms are, however, owned
and technologically developed by large corporations, which have strong commercial interests in how public activities take shape on their platforms. These
commercial interests and corresponding strategic motives do not always align well with those of public institutions, which, despite the dominant rhetoric,
remain important organizational and regulatory actors. Equally complicated is the new active role of users, as creators, producers, sellers, and semi-experts.
Consequently, the integration of platforms in public space has been characterized by ongoing confrontations regarding the role and governance of platforms
and their users. Developing a framework to resolve such confrontations, this paper considers the particular ‘responsibilities’of key stakeholders. What kinds
of responsibilities can platform corporations reasonably be expected to take in how they regulate and steer public activity? To which extent can platform
users be held responsible for their intended and especially also unintended contributions to public communication? And finally, as public space often no
longer coincides with public institutions and strictly regulated commercial actors, do governments need to shift the focus from protecting public space to
advancing public value? Based on insights from theories about ‘risk sharing’ and the ‘problem of many hands’, we will sketch the contours of a framework
of shared responsibility for the realization of public values on platforms. The key idea of our proposal is that the realization of core public values, in public
activities centrally involving online platforms, should be the result of the dynamic interaction between platforms, users, and public institutions. To guide
this interaction, we propose a number of key mechanisms to regulate the distribution of responsibilities between these stakeholders.