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Pandemics and Platforms: Private Governance of (Dis)Information in Crisis Situations

Author: Kettemann, M. C., & Sekwenz, M.
Published in: M. C. Kettemann, & K. Lachmayer (Eds.), Pandemocracy in Europe Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID-19 (pp. 263–282). Oxford, UK; New York, USA: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Year: 2022
Type: Book contributions and chapters
DOI: 10.5040/9781509946396.ch-013

What role do online platforms play in managing and governing information during the pandemic? Chinese platforms cooperated substantially with the governments’ message (and message control) on the coronavirus, but also US-based platforms like Twitter and Facebook that had employed a hands-off approach to certain types of disinformation in the past invested considerably in the tools necessary to govern online disinformation more actively. Facebook, for instance, deleted Facebook events for anti-lockdown demonstrations while Twitter had to rely heavily on automated filtering (with human content governance employees back at home). This chapter will assess these practices, their impact and permanence in light of the author’s research on the important role of intermediaries as normative actors, including their establishment, through terms of service and content governance practices, of a private order of public communication.

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Matthias C. Kettemann, Prof. Dr. LL.M. (Harvard)

Head of Research Group and Associate Researcher: Global Constitutionalism and the Internet


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Du siehst eine Tastatur auf der eine Taste rot gefärbt ist und auf der „Control“ steht. Eine bildliche Metapher für die Regulierung von digitalen Plattformen im Internet und Data Governance. You see a keyboard on which one key is coloured red and says "Control". A figurative metaphor for the regulation of digital platforms on the internet and data governance.

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