Exploring Governance Structures on Social Media Platforms

At the heart of the technological innovations and the advanced forms of social interaction these “social media” afford, there are two central and relatively novel features to which researchers turned their attention: Firstly, the articulation of the social graph and, secondly, lower barriers for user generated content and social production. However, there is still lack of knowledge about the system of norms, rules, laws and factual restrictions of similar effect that guide and restrain the activities on social media – i.e. social media governance. The workshop will discuss the state of knowledge and will present an attempt to dwell deeper into the matter.

Top 5 Research Questions

We have identified a number of research questions on this topic. Here are the top 5 (details in attached pdf):

• What about the development of the structures of governance on social media platforms?
• Is there a kind of self-governance by the users? If so, in which cases (type of platform, issues, …) do they take over responsibility?
• How can the legal system make use of the knowledge about governance on social media platforms to form an adequate, procedural framework? 
• Can cross-country comparison demonstrate significant difference between the structures of governance on social media platforms?
• If so, what are plausible causes for those variations?