Conference Agenda

China's governance of Internet content has been considered to follow a state-controlled, top-down model(Qiu & Bu, 2013). Content platforms serve not only as infrastructure for cultural production, but also as an effective tool for state management of public affairs(Zheng & Huang, 2018). However, the tightening of governance and the fast growth of the digital culture industries happened at the same time. The effective monetization strategies of platforms have generated economic value and serving as a significant channel for propagating ideology(Chen et al., 2021).

To understand the integration of the state role on Chinese platforms, our study poses the following questions: 1) How does the state delineate its governance responsibilities and boundaries? 2) How is the state role integrated through self-regulation of the platforms? 3) What other stakeholders perceive the state's roles in the content production process?

Building on Schwarz (2017), our study examines official content governance documents and conducts Douyin as an in-depth case study. We investigate Douyin's regulatory strategies and the perspectives of MCNs on these regulations. Interviews with 10 MCN employees and 14 Douyin influencers shed light on their responses to these policies.

Our study finds out: 1) The analysis of state policies indicates that the subject of content regulation primarily targets content platforms directly, with minimal involvement of specific users or groups. The state typically sets the "bottom-line" as the standard for platform regulations. 2) The analysis of regulatory documents released by Douyin reveals that the platform adheres to the "bottom-line" set by the state while also making additional provisions according to its business needs. 3) The state roles in content platform regulation can be categorized into two forms: routine governance and emergency governance. These alternating forms of governance illustrate how the state, as a formal authority, grants the digital content industry space for economic development while promptly asserting its authority, when necessary, thereby realigning content governance processes to align with national interests.

Refereces

1. Qiu, J. L., & Bu, W. (2013). China ICT studies: A review of the field, 1989–2012. China Review, 13(2), 123-152.

2. Zheng, Y., & Huang, Y. (2018). Market in state: The political economy of domination in China. Cambridge University Press.

3. Chen, X., Valdovinos Kaye, D. B., & Zeng, J. (2021, 2021/01/02). #PositiveEnergy Douyin: constructing “playful patriotism” in a Chinese short-video application. Chinese Journal of Communication, 14(1), 97-117.

4. Schwarz, J. (2017, 08/03). Platform Logic: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Platform-Based Economy: Platform Logic. Policy & Internet, 9.

On August 19th, 2019, YouTube filed a lawsuit against Minecraft YouTuber Christopher Brady for fraudulently copyright claiming, financially extorting, and doxxing fellow members of the Minecraft community in what a company spokesperson described as a case of “particularly egregious abuse” (Alexander, 2019). Despite growing concern with the appropriation of platform governance tools from users, policymakers, and academics, we lack specificity around what it means to abuse these tools. As Crawford and Gillespie observe, “flags can have many meanings and functions, and users’ engagement with flags can be both individual and social” (2016, p. 421). Furthermore, unlike other types of content moderation systems, copyright is governed by stricter legal frameworks that require greater transparency in reporting and harsher consequences for violations (Gray, 2020). With recent work on platform governance calling for more transparent content moderation (Are, 2023, Zolides, 2023), copyright reporting tools provide an ideal case to test how greater transparency requirements shape the abuse of platform governance and surface competing socio-legal norms.

Through an integrative analysis of 154 transnational copyright controversies documented on Wikitubia, a fan wiki dedicated to YouTube, we investigate the “cultures of compliance” associated with copyright on the platform (Gillett et al., 2023). While some controversies involved commercial rightsholders, a majority focused on individual creators. YouTubers were identified as targets and perpetrators of copyright abuse, fighting and filing unfair claims against ideological opponents, economic rivals, and even former friends. We locate contested copyright claims on a spectrum ranging from accidental misuse, such as when ContentID erroneously flags a creator’s original song as a copyright violation, to intentional abuse, exemplified by Brady’s extortion of fellow Minecraft YouTubers. However, most documented controversies fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, a gray zone where people disagree on what constitutes legitimate use. We argue that structural differences in copyright enforcement systems fail to prevent individual harm and also heighten the collective stakes of abuse, threatening to undermine the political-economic and socio-technical systems on which the platform economy depends.

Alexander, J. (2019, August 19). YouTube sues alleged copyright troll over extortion of multiple YouTubers / Chris Brady seemed to target the Minecraft community, according to the suit. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20812144/youtube-copyright-strike-lawsuit-alleged-extortion-minecraft

Are, C. (2023). The assemblages of flagging and de-platforming against marginalised content creators. Convergence, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231218629.

Crawford, K., & Gillespie, T. (2016). What is a flag for? Social media reporting tools and the vocabulary of complaint. New Media & Society, 18(3), 410–428. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814543163

Gillett, R., Gray, J. E., & Valdovinos Kaye, D. B. (2023). ‘Just a little hack’: Investigating cultures of content moderation circumvention by Facebook users. New Media & Society, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221147661

Gray, J. E. (2020). Google Rules: The History and Future of Copyright Under the Influence of Google (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190072070.001.0001

Zolides, A. (2023). Toxic community policing: Weaponizing moderation tools on Twitch. In J. Brewer, B. Ruberg, A. L. L. Cullen, & C. J. Persaud (Eds.), Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (pp. 131–144). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14526.003.0013

Author Bios:

Blake Hallinan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University and a member of the ERC-funded DigitalValues project. They direct the Participatory Platform Governance Lab, researching how users experience, negotiate, and transform the normative standards governing public life on digital platforms.

D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds working on the ERC-funded MUSICSTREAM project (2022-2026), focusing mainly on aspects related to the music industries, music creators, and public policy.

CJ Reynolds is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem researching responses to institutional mistrust and failure in state and platform contexts.

Xinyue Shen is a Master’s student in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He researches the contemporary cultures of love and intimacy in East Asia, with a focus on the subjectification function of media.

This paper expores the intricate ethical dimensions surrounding the right to be excluded from the information society and an analogue life in the context of the rapidly evolving information age. The Information Society (IS), characterised by extensive digital connectivity and technological advancements, presents both advantages and challenges. As detailed in the literature review, the IS represents a web of inequality, shaped by interwoven social, economic, cultural, and geographical factors that creates an inequitable access to technology broadly termed as the ‘digital divide’ (Van Dijk, 2006). The same literature suggests that individual hesitancy toward technology, whether due to fear, scepticism, or a lack of perceived benefit, needs addressing (Ragnedda and Muschert, 2013).

While IS offers improved communication, access to knowledge, and economic opportunities, it also raises concerns related to privacy, data protection, social equity, or individual autonomy, among others. The former has led to a number of recent ‘opposition movements’ in several countries. A noticeable trend also shows that individuals are increasingly seeking analogue experiences, such as attending unplugged retreats or spending time offline to focus on personal relationships, favouring traditional mediums like books, vinyl records, and handwritten materials over digital alternatives. This preference underscores for example the European Economic and Social Committee's (EESC, 2019) stance that the digital transition should incorporate analogue elements to be broadly accepted, cautioning against an over-reliance on digital replacements.

Examining this ethical conundrum, the paper navigates through philosophical foundations and uses six ethical lenses (utilitarian, contractualist, deontological, virtue, discourse, and care ethics), to discuss the balance between individual rights and societal interests. While recognizing the potential productivity and other benefits and cost savings associated with digitalisation, the paper contends that safeguarding individual freedom, even at a fractional cost of financial and social capital, is paramount in a democratic society.

The concluding remarks underscore the complex and multifaceted nature of the right to be excluded from the information society and an analogue life. It calls for inclusive policy making within ethical frameworks that strike a delicate balance between individual preferences and societal interests in an evolving digital landscape and eventually for the establishment of a human right to analogue life similar to the one recently enacted in the Constitution of Geneva for a ‘droit à une vie hors ligne’ (Article 21A). This invocation of a right to be excluded from the IS and an analogue life does not represent a Luddite retreat from technology, but rather a selective engagement on one's own terms. In this light, the right to exclusion becomes an essential counterbalance to the information society's overreach, providing a necessary space for individuality, creativity, and critical thought.

The Internet spread at a time where globalization was rampant and multistakeholder and global private sector governance institutions were on the rise (Scholte, 2004; Abbott and Snidal, 2008). The early stages of the diffusion of the Internet at a planetary scale was met with several types of responses across levels and actors. The Tunis Agenda of 2005 set the foundations for adopting Internet policies across all levels, including the national, in alignment with human rights and sustainable development objectives. Through ideas concerning the principle of subsidiarity of Internet policies at the national level, national actors were encouraged to apply the WSIS recommendations (Radu, 2019). As the norms emerged, new policy instruments had to be designed for this new issue.

From a national actors' perspective, digital agendas emerged as one of these instruments in the immediate post-WSIS scenario. Digital agendas are understudied in the ways in which they frame and approach Internet policy, both nationally and internationally, and how they may contribute to the formation of certain normative preferences on what the Internet means or may help a country to accomplish (Broeders, 2015). The first such experience was registered in the EU, with the eEurope initiative of 1999 as a forerunner of the digital agenda 2010-2020 (Petit et al, 2024). This work examines the diffusion of norms and ideas that emerged in the post WSIS period and their shaping of national digital agendas using Uruguay as a study case. By analyzing this example, and contrasting it with a similar experience of continuity in the EU, this work aims to address the extent in which a national digital agenda is relevant for rendering visible state actors’ preferences on Internet policy.

Uruguay is somewhat of an outlier in the Latin American context. A small country of 176,000 km2, 3.4 million inhabitants, it is comparatively rich and developed (both economically and digitally from human development (HDI) and ICT Development Index (IDI), and with a welfare state tradition (Midaglia et al., 2017). Uruguay embraced its first digital agenda in 2007, which has been an ongoing, updated and uninterrupted policy instrument in several versions since then (AGESIC, 2020).

The Uruguayan national agenda has been both a driver as well as a foundation for cooperation and governance mechanisms in regional and global internet governance, with the involvement in venues such as the IGF MAG, the group of Digital Nations (D9) and the ECLAC’s information society instrument in the region, eLAC. As figure 1 shows, interdependencies between eLAC and the national agenda are particularly noteworthy and have ascertained the stages in the institutionalization of the construction of a norm (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). We argue that this phenomenon is due to norm entrepreneurs on both institutional processes and the continuity of the leadership.

The continuity of a national digital agenda is a unique case in global majority contexts and even in Latin America, where countries with similar Internet and developmental indicators have not continued with this policy tool to shape their strategic priorities.

Empirical questions that we address in this study include: Which were the key processes, institutions and stakeholders that contributed to the continuity and consolidation of the national digital policy? Which were the internal and external political and economic factors that have allowed Uruguay to maintain a continuous policy since 2007 vis-a-vis other countries in Latin America? How was the Uruguayan digital agenda articulated with international and national issues concerning the Internet? What are the lessons for other countries in the region and in global majority contexts that aim to develop and/or sustain digital agendas? To accomplish the above, this work will develop an in-depth case study of Uruguay based on extensive document analysis and content analysis relating to the national digital agenda (i.e., issue attention, Bevan, 2019), as well as interviews with key stakeholders for its development and monitoring.

We argue that the real strength of the Uruguayan digital agenda process lies not so much in the initial configuration of an agenda, but in the continuity of an institutionally recognized and embedded policy space. As figure 2 and 3 show, this continuity has first enabled the emergence, and then the consolidation of a national policy for the Internet, in terms of stages of Internet development, numbers of goals and issue attention per agenda. These have become broader to encompass not only standards and infrastructure concerns, but increasingly skills and capabilities.

Our study also suggests that Uruguay’s slow consolidation of a welfare state for over one century is a factor that frames its preferences for the national digital agenda to become a cross-cutting instrument for many of its health, social and educational policies.

Empirically we aim to contribute to the Internet policy literature by helping to identify the role of national digital agendas in the definition of priorities, in tracing the normative preferences of the actors involved, and in assessing degrees of influence and interdependencies across the national and international levels. Conceptually, the work will contribute in filling a gap on the “normfare” on Internet policy (Radu et a., 2021) by examining the subsidiarity of Internet policies at the national level and the formation of state preferences on the Internet in the tradition of liberalism in IR (Giannone, Santaniello, 2018).

References

Abbott, K. W., & Snidal, D. (2008). The Governance Triangle : Regulatory Standards Institutions and The Shadow of the State. In W. Mattli & N. Woods (Eds.), The Politics of Global Regulation. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Agencia de Gobierno Electrónico y Sociedad de la Información y del Conocimiento (2020, 31 de julio). Agenda Uruguay Digital. Gub.uy. https://www.gub.uy/agencia-gobierno-electronico-sociedad-informacion-conocimiento/politicas-y-gestion/programas/agenda-digital-del-uruguay

Bevan, S. (2019). Gone Fishing: The Creation of the Comparative Agendas Project Master Codebook. En Baumgartner, F., Breunig, C., & Grossman, E (Coords.), Comparative Policy Agendas: Theory, Tools, Data (pp. 17–34). Oxford Academic.

Broeders, D. (2015). The public core of the Internet. An international agenda for internet governance. Amsterdam University Press.

Finnemore, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization, 52(4), 887–917.

Giannone, D., & Santaniello, M. (2019). Governance by indicators: The case of the Digital Agenda for Europe. Information, Communication & Society, 22(13), 1889–1902. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1469655

Midaglia, C., Antía, F., Carneiro, F., Castillo, M., Fuentes, G., & Villegas Plá, B. (2017). Orígenes del bienestar en Uruguay: explicando el universalismo estratificado. Udelar. FCS-ICP, 1(17), 1-50. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/19977

Petit, A., Wala, Z., Ciucci, M., & Martinello, B. (2024). Una Agenda Digital para Europa. European Parliament. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/erpl-app-public/factsheets/pdf/es/FTU_2.4.3.pdf

Radu, R. (2019). The WSIS Decade and the Public–Private Partnership Thirst. In R. Radu (Ed.), Negotiating Internet Governance (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198833079.003.0005

Radu, R., Kettemann, M. C., Meyer, T., & Shahin, J. (2021). Normfare: Norm entrepreneurship in internet governance. Telecommunications Policy, 45(6), 102148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2021.102148

Scholte, J. A. (2008). Defining Globalisation. The World Economy, 31(11), 1471–1502. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9701.2007.01019.x