Media policy analysis and diplomatic interactions during COVID-19 between China and the United States in a comparative perspective

This is a comparative study of official diplomatic speeches regarding COVID-19, released by spokespersons for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and documents from the United States Department of State China Archive. It explores how these speeches and documents reflect the US–China relations and the conduct of policies surrounding digital media in the two countries. We focus on the period from the start of the Wuhan lockdown, 20 January 2020, to the city’s reopening on 8 April, and use several forms of content analysis to analyse the documents: Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling, sentiment network analysis and word clouds. We argue that the diplomatic relationship and political ideologies adopted by different political and media systems can have a major impact upon media policy implementation and guidance.

Advanced Introduction to Platform Economics, Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller (2020)

Review of: Advanced Introduction to Platform Economics, Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller (2020) Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 176 pp., ISBN 978-1-78990-062-0, p/bk, £15.95

The globalization of TikTok: Strategies, governance and geopolitics

This article examines the rise of TikTok in three aspects: globalization strategies, data and content policies, and geopolitical implications. Instead of focusing on app features and uses within the platform proper, we situate and critically analyse TikTok as a platform business in a global media policy and governance context. We first unpack TikTok’s platformization process, tracing how TikTok gradually diversifies its business models and platform affordances to serve multisided markets. To understand TikTok’s platform governance, we systematically analyse and compare its data and content policies for different regions. Crucial to its global expansion, we then look at TikTok’s lobbying efforts to maintain government relations and corporate responses after facing multiple regulatory probing by various national governments. TikTok’s case epitomizes problems and challenges faced by a slew of globalizing Chinese digital platforms in increasingly contested geopolitics that cut across the chasms and fault lines between the rise of China and India as emergent powers in the US-dominated global platform ecosystem.

The changing context of age-based classification and policy research in the age of subscription-video-on-demand

This article draws on a history of media classification in Australia to consider how this field is developing. The focus is on age-based classification of commercially and professionally produced content, specifically made available through streaming and subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) platforms. As platform company Netflix steps into the terrain of regulation, this environment is changing quite dramatically. The Netflix tool emerges in a governmental space characterized by new and emerging transnational governance and monitoring Boards, ghost work and moral panics in the form of online firestorms. Questions developed in the time of legacy media that consider human and machine, and industry and government as working separately, are confronted by new practices and points of inquiry with impacts broader than Australian media consumption.

Platform policy: Evaluating different responses to the challenges of platform power

This article identifies a ‘policy turn’ in questions of internet governance, as politicians and policy-makers across multiple jurisdictions grapple with the power of digital platforms, and associated questions of accountability, transparency, market dominance and content regulation. The EU Hate Speech monitoring code, the Christchurch Call, the UK Online Harms Bill and Australia’s ACCC Digital Platforms Inquiry are manifestations of this trend, in what Philip Schlesinger has described as an emergent ‘regulatory field’. While corporate self-regulation has tended to be the dominant framework for digital sectors, there is growing pressure on the part of nation states for greater external regulation. In this article, we will consider different conceptual premises for understanding platform power, arising from neo-pluralist, class and elite theories, as well as the relative significance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nation state governments, corporate self-regulation (e.g. Facebook Oversight Board) and supranational governance mechanisms, such as Tim Berners-Lee’s proposed ‘Contract for the Web’.

Producing Children’s Television in the On-Demand Age, Anna Potter (2020)

Review of: Producing Children’s Television in the On-Demand Age, Anna Potter (2020) Bristol: Intellect Ltd, 188 pp., ISBN 978-1-78938-291-4, p/bk, USD 37.00

Examining the Australian Digital Platforms Inquiry and theorizing ‘accidental policy’

‘Accidental policy’ is a term often used to disparage unplanned or under-deliberated policy, but it can also be used as a concept to define and theorize policy development and its effects more broadly. This article does the latter by applying the accidental policy lens to the case of the Australian Digital Platforms Inquiry – the first of its kind worldwide – and then uses elements from the development and effects of the inquiry to theorize the concept for application in other policy studies. This article examines the factors – including existing media, communications, technology developments and policies and political manoeuvring – that led Australia to confront large multinational platforms and become a world leader in digital platforms policy. Rather than the continuation of a long-term, consistent policy regime, the inquiry resulted from political expediency and behind-the-scenes parliamentary deal making. This article provides an analysis of a situation in which a deliberative policy process did not occur but a significant policy impetus was still developed. This study adds to the understanding of accidental policy making in which a rapid response to external pressures, as well as more complex factors including political negotiation and deal making, is at play.

The symbolic uses of platforms: The politics of platform governance in the United States

Unlike many other countries around the world, the United States has taken relatively little substantive action in the realm of platform governance, despite the United States being directly impacted by occurrences such as Russian interference in the 2016 election, domestic disinformation related to the 2020 election, the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal and the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation that has accompanied the Coronavirus pandemic. Yet the past four years have involved numerous Congressional hearings on various aspects of platform governance and a multitude of bills have been introduced addressing a similarly wide range of platform governance issues. With so many indicators of potential government action over the past half-decade, but so few actual policy interventions, platform governance appears to be a prime example of a policy-making context in which symbolic actions are taking precedence over substantive actions. This article illustrates this dynamic through an analysis of recent platform governance developments in the United States.

Digital dilemmas in the (post-)pandemic state: Surveillance and information rights in South Korea

Drawing on South Korea’s response to COVID-19, this article examines how the digital measures that were implemented by the nation state during the pandemic intensified the dilemma between public safety and information rights. South Korea’s highly praised handling of COVID-19 raises the question of how far digital technology can infiltrate everyday life for the sake of public safety and how citizens can negotiate the rapid digital transformation of a nation state. The South Korean government’s digital measures during the pandemic involved the extensive use of personal data; however, citizens were not allowed sufficient participation in the flow of information. By critically examining the South Korean case, this article reveals that the government coped with the pandemic through digital surveillance as a way to avoid physical lockdown, and in so doing, projected its desire for transition to a digitally advanced state while facilitating nationalism through a digital utopian discourse.