Digital Platform Policy and Regulation: Toward a Radical Democratic Turn

Authors

  • Bart Cammaerts London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Robin Mansell London School of Economics and Political Science

Keywords:

digital platforms, media content, communication infrastructure, regulation, deliberation, radical democracy

Abstract

This article considers challenges to policy and regulation presented by the dominant digital platforms. A radical democratic framing of the deliberative process is developed to acknowledge the full complexity of power relations that are at play in policy and regulatory debates, and this view is contrasted with a traditional liberal democratic perspective. We show how these different framings have informed historical and contemporary approaches to the challenges presented by conflicting interests in economic value and a range of public values in the context of media content, communication infrastructure, and digital platform policy and regulation. We argue for an agonistic approach to digital platform policy and regulatory debate so as to encourage a denaturalization of the prevailing logics of commercial datafication. We offer some suggestions about how such a generative discourse might be encouraged in such a way that it starts to yield a new common sense about the further development of digital platforms, one that might favor a digital ecology better attuned to consumer and citizen interests in democratic societies.

Author Biographies

Bart Cammaerts, London School of Economics and Political Science

Senior lecturer in the Media and Communications Department of the LSE. His current research interests are centred around the core-concepts of power, participation, resistance and communication rights and include a focus on multi-stakeholder policy processes; media strategies of activists; alternative/community media and the mediated forms of resistance. He is vice-chair of the Communication and Democracy Section of the European Communication and Research Association - ECREA and vice-chair of the Communication, Technology & Policy-section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research- IAMCR . Beyond academia, Bart Cammaerts is also active within the community radio movement and as a musician and dj.

Robin Mansell, London School of Economics and Political Science

Professor of New Media and the Internet

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Published

2020-01-01

Issue

Vol. 14 (2020)

Section

Articles

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