The dark side of digitalization and social media platform governance: a citizen engagement study

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dc.contributor.authorMcCarthy, Stephenen
dc.contributor.authorRowan, Wendyen
dc.contributor.authorMahony, Carolanneen
dc.contributor.authorVergne, Antoineen
dc.date.accessioned2023-04-21T15:21:40Z
dc.date.available2023-04-21T15:21:40Z
dc.date.issued2023-01-09en
dc.description.abstractPurpose: Social media platforms are a pervasive technology that continues to define the modern world. While social media has brought many benefits to society in terms of connection and content sharing, numerous concerns remain for the governance of social media platforms going forward, including (but not limited to) the spread of misinformation, hate speech and online surveillance. However, the voice of citizens and other non-experts is often missing from such conversations in information systems literature, which has led to an alleged gap between research and the everyday life of citizens. Design/methodology/approach: The authors address this gap by presenting findings from 16 h of online dialog with 25 citizens on social media platform governance. The online dialog was undertaken as part of a worldwide consultation project called “We, the internet”, which sought to provide citizens with a voice on a range of topics such as “Digitalization and Me,” “My Data, Your Data, Our Data” and “A Strong Digital Public Sphere.” Five phases of thematic analysis were undertaken by the authors to code the corpus of qualitative data. Findings: Drawing on the Theory of Communicative Action, the authors discuss three dialogical processes critical to citizen discourse: lifeworld reasoning, rationalization and moral action. The findings point toward citizens’ perspectives of current and future issues associated with social media platform governance, including concerns around the multiplicity of digital identities, consent for vulnerable groups and transparency in content moderation. The findings also reveal citizens’ rationalization of the dilemmas faced in addressing these issues going forward, including tensions such as digital accountability vs data privacy, protection vs inclusion and algorithmic censorship vs free speech. Originality/value: Based on outcomes from this dialogical process, moral actions in the form of policy recommendations are proposed by citizens and for citizens. The authors find that tackling these dark sides of digitalization is something too important to be left to “Big Tech” and equally requires an understanding of citizens’ perspectives to ensure an informed and positive imprint for change.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationMcCarthy, S., Rowan, W., Mahony, C. and Vergne, A. (2023) ‘The dark side of digitalization and social media platform governance: a citizen engagement study’, Internet Research, 33(6), pp. 2172-2204. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-03-2022-0142.en
dc.identifier.doi10.1108/intr-03-2022-0142en
dc.identifier.endpage38en
dc.identifier.endpage2204
dc.identifier.issn1066-2243en
dc.identifier.issued6
dc.identifier.journaltitleInternet Researchen
dc.identifier.startpage1en
dc.identifier.startpage2172
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/14399
dc.identifier.volume33
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherEmeralden
dc.relation.ispartofInternet Researchen
dc.rights© 2023, Stephen McCarthy, Wendy Rowan, Carolanne Mahony and Antoine Vergne. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcodeen
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectDigitalization of the individualen
dc.subjectCitizen participationen
dc.subjectDark sidesen
dc.subjectQualitative studyen
dc.titleThe dark side of digitalization and social media platform governance: a citizen engagement studyen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
dc.typejournal-articleen
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