The decisions that govern the Internet can seem out of the hands of the people that use it, shaped instead almost entirely by governments and large tech corporations. But how can civil society help foster healthier, more democratic digital ecosystems? 

As part of MediaWell’s video essay series on transnational digital governance, Swati Srivastava (Purdue University) explores the influence of civil society groups. Watchdogs like Ranking Digital Rights offer an important counterweight against more powerful actors by creating cross-platform, human rights-focused scorecards – raising the bar for accountability and transparency in the digital sphere.

Digital content doesn’t stop at national borders. Social media companies have long had to navigate competing expectations, often by tailoring their platforms to the demands of key markets; as a result, regulations set in one place shape the user experience in another. But what happens when those markets take opposite approaches to content moderation? 

As part of MediaWell’s video essay series on transnational digital governance, tech governance scholar Swati Srivastava (Purdue University) explores the uncertainties of what she calls a “new era of platform governance” – the growing divergence between countries in the Global North, the reality of most users living in the Global South, and how platforms are rethinking how they make decisions about governance, power, and authority. 

Who gets to be influential, and at what cost? Over the past two decades, public attention spans and approaches to “truth” have undergone significant transformation: from legacy media to short-form video, credentialed expertise to projected authenticity, and, increasingly, from human influencers to AI-generated ones. 

In this research review, communications scholar Julia Jeonghyun Parke provides a detailed look into social media influencers as voices of authority in the public sphere – how success is shaped by algorithms and social hierarchies, and where new frameworks are needed to understand one of the biggest shifts in our contemporary media landscape.

For his second video essay in MediaWell’s series on transnational digital governance, law and technology expert Dr. Ivar Hartmann (Insper, Brazil) highlights key issues for U.S. media and civil society – at a time when many countries, especially across the Global South, are looking elsewhere for regulatory inspiration. 

This essay explores some of these rising models of global tech policy: the influence of EU-style AI regulation, the role that procedural rights can play in content moderation, and possibilities for improving the digital public sphere.

As part of MediaWell’s video essay series on transnational digital governance, law and technology expert Ivar Hartmann (Insper, Brazil) outlines some of the topics dominating the field’s attention – and those that aren’t, but should. 

Where generative AI and the downstream effects of geopolitical conflict have captured much of the conversation in research and policy circles, this essay calls for a collective focus shift towards issues with at least as much impact – if not more – on our everyday lives, like platform work, content recommendation algorithms, and “outside-the-box” attempts to regulate Big Tech.