Empire and the megamachine: comparing two controversies over social media content

Stephanie Hill

Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, 2019, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a thematic analysis of hearings held before the US senate in 2017 with representatives of social media companies and close coverage from industry groups of advertising boycotts of social media. In response to the public pressure, social media companies increased their investment in machine learning and human moderation to remove inappropriate content and increased transparency initiatives. The two scenarios indicate the importance of content to questions of platform governance and the ability of the advertising industry to act as a platform regulator. This paper uses the political economic analysis of Harold Innis and theoretical work on the megamachine as a framework for understanding how governance may be enacted through commercial systems before and around government policy tools. It argues that social media companies' actions indicate an expanded role for marketing and advertising as governors of media content delivery, resulting in the efficient administration of advertiser concerns while democratic representatives take a comparatively slow road.

Keywords: Social media; Governance; Advertising; Megamachine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/214069/1/IntPolRev-2019-1-1393.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:iprjir:214069

DOI: 10.14763/2019.1.1393

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation from Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().