Lab Platform Governance, Media and Technology
The Lab “Platform Governance, Media and Technology” examines the interactions between regulation, discourses and the development of technologies and business models. Digital platforms and new infrastructures, algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and data are currently fundamentally (re)organising communication, the public sphere and society. At the same time, these media, their technologies and economic structures are themselves (still) in a process of formation that is shaped by governance, regulation and public debate. How should platforms like Facebook and YouTube deal with disinformation campaigns and hate speech? What challenges does the increasing use of automation and AI bring? And how do public debates and perceptions of problems in turn impact back on regulation and technology development?
We explore these questions with a focus on three areas of work:
(1) Platform Governance and Economics;
(2) Institutionalisation of AI – Regulation, Discourses, Technology;
(3) Automation Regulation and Communication.
In several large international third-party funded projects on these topics, funded by the DFG, the EU’s H2020 framework programme, the BMBF, the Volkswagen Foundation and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (BpB), we collaborate with partners in France, UK, Canada, Switzerland, and Italy. In empirical studies, the Lab integrates computational methods and qualitative approaches. We attach great importance to the development of open data infrastructures (Platform Governance Archive), especially in the notoriously non-transparent research field of platform governance.

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellows 2025
2. March 2025

Session 17 of "Behind the Scenes" Online Talk Series with Tom Divon & Carolina Are
24. February 2025

Christian Katzenbach as an interview guest in the online magazine ‘up2date.’
11. February 2025

Guest Lectures on Platform Governance and Social Justice in Dublin
10. February 2025

Session 16 of "Behind the Scenes" Online Talk Series with Emillie de Keulenaar
7. February 2025

Developments in Internet censorship in Russia
23. January 2025

ZeMKI hosts AoIR Flashpoint Symposium 2025
- Datum: 3. June 2025 – 4. June 2025
20. January 2025

Christian Katzenbach as an expert in the “Tagesspiegel”
17. January 2025