Watch UCL IIPP in conversation's panel discussion with Dr Robert Gorwa, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Berlin Social Science Center and, Marisol Manfredi, PhD Candidate of Sustainable Development & Climate Change (IUSS Pavia + University of Pisa) and Dr Cecilia Rikap, Head of Research, UCL IIPP, on Robert's book 'The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation'.

As digital platforms have become more integral to not just how we live, but also to how we do politics, the rules governing online expression, behaviour, and interaction created by large multinational technology firms -- popularly termed ‘content moderation,’ ‘platform governance,’ or ‘trust and safety’ -- have increasingly become the target of government regulatory efforts seeking to shape them. This book (coming soon) provides a conceptual and empirical analysis of this important and emerging tech policy terrain of ‘platform regulation.’ How, why, and where exactly is it happening? Why now? And how do we best understand the vast array of strategies being deployed across jurisdictions to tackle this issue?

The book outlines three strategies commonly pursued by government actors seeking to combat issues relating to the proliferation of hate speech, disinformation, child abuse imagery, and other forms of harmful content on user-generated content platforms: persuasive, collaborative, and contested forms of platform regulation. It then outlines a theoretical model for explaining the adoption of these different strategies in different political contexts and regulatory episodes. This model is explored through case studies of policy development (Germany, Australia and New Zealand, United States) driven by a combination of stakeholder interviews and deliberative policy documents obtained via freedom of information requests.