Looking at the Oversight: Meditations on Platform Governance (with Robyn Caplan)

Suddenly everyone is an expert on platform governance but how do we situate the current widespread public concern around how privatized commons are ruled? Where is the moral brightline for the researchers and critics of big tech when the financial incentives to join the very same companies are high? How do we understand platform governance in a longer history where big tech corporations refused access to researchers and many felt the harm was something that would happen much further down the road? Should we resurrect the analogy to media (TV, Radio, Print) to better understand what regulatory approaches are useful?  We discuss these questions and more with Robyn Caplan.

Robyn Caplan is a Researcher at Data & Society, and a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University (ABD, advisor Philip M. Napoli) in the School of Communication and Information Studies. She conducts research on issues related to platform governance and content standards. Her most recent work investigates the extent to which organizational dynamics at major platform companies impacts the development and enforcement of policy geared towards limiting disinformation and hate speech, and the impact of regulation, industry coordination, and advocacy can play in changing platform policies.

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Host: J. Khadijah Abdurahman, Ilan Mandel
Music: Drew Lewis

Links for the Episode:
Who Controls the Public Sphere in an Era of Algorithms
When Media Companies Insist They're Not Media Companies and Why It Matters for Communications Policy by Philip M. Napoli, Robyn Caplan
Content or Context Moderation?: Artisanal, Community Reliant and Industrial Approaches
Listening to Black Women: The Innovation Tech Can't Crack