Digital platforms have become central arenas of political communication, governance, and civic engagement across Europe. At the same time, they are increasingly subject to political regulation, strategic state intervention, and growing public scrutiny. This panel examines the evolving relationship between political power and digital platforms, focusing on the ways platforms are simultaneously governed and used by political actors, capable of shaping political processes themselves, and contested from below by citizens, workers, researchers, and civil society organisations.
Positioned within the broader transformations affecting European democracies, the panel explores how regulatory power is redistributed between politics, private companies and citizens Thus regulations are not a unidirectional exercise of public authority but seen as a contested process.
Contributions may address issues in platform (de-)regulation and governance such as but not limited to corporate strategies of non-compliance, contestation and regulatory capture; democratic accountability; digital sovereignty and geopolitical competition; state-platform relations; political campaigning and electoral integrity; and the role of platforms in facilitating or constraining civic engagement. We equally welcome work on counter-power and refusal: user exit, migration and the building of alternative or decentralised infrastructures; algorithmic resistance and transnational digital rights advocacy. Comparative, theoretical, and empirical perspectives are welcome, as are studies examining interactions between online and offline political arenas.
The panel is especially interested in the role of control over or by platforms (and of resistance to both) in shaping democratic resilience. To what extent do regulatory interventions mitigate or reinforce existing inequalities and power asymmetries in terms of inclusion, representation, and political participation? Who is able to resist platform power effectively, and who is excluded from that capacity? Which regulations enable platforms to strengthen democratic governance, and when do they contribute to polarization, institutional fragility, or democratic backsliding? When does corporate resistance to regulation succeed in hollowing out democratic oversight, and when does civic resistance succeed in extending it?
By bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds this panel seeks to advance our understanding of how authority, legitimacy, political control and contestation are co-constructed and being renegotiated in an increasingly platformized public sphere, and what these developments mean for the future of democracy.
