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.

‘Plat-formation: The Formation of Platforms and Their Governance’ - lecture by Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach at the University of Sheffield on Thursday
ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach will give a lecture on ‘Plat-formation: The Formation of Platforms and Their Governance’ at the University of Sheffield on Thursday, the 30th of May. Abstract How do social media platforms become what they are, how do they change and what is the role of governance in this process? Platforms (…)
28. May 2024

ZeMKI member Dennis Redeker organized conference roundtable on global digital policy
22. May 2024

ZeMKI member Dr. Daria Dergacheva is speaking at CPDP.ai 2024 conference today in Brussels
ZeMKI member Dr. Daria Dergacheva is speaking at CPDP.ai 2024 conference in Brussels today, 22 May 2024. She is a panelist at the panel organized by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), on “The Impact of Online Content Moderation and Curation on Fundamental Rights: How to Assess, Mitigate and Monitor Systemic Risks on Online (…)
22. May 2024

‘Unpacking the US TikTok ban’ - ZeMKI member Rebecca Scharlach writes about the proposed TikTok ban in the US
‘Unpacking the US TikTok ban’ Can the US government really ban TikTok? Do they really want to do that? In her blog post, ZeMKI member Rebecca Scharlach summarises the events that lead to the proposed TikTok ban in the United States, discusses the general issues that TikTok has been facing, explains the relevance of the First Amendment (…)
20. May 2024

Erasmus+ "Blended-Intensive Programme" on global digital governance hosted at ZeMKI
In late April 2024, ZeMKI and the University of Bremen, hosted their first-ever Erasmus+ “blended-intensive programme” (BIP). Around thirty students and half a dozen instructors from eight universities across Europe participated in a week-long workshop designed under the theme “Digital Constitutionalism and the UN Global Digital Compact”. This in-person phase of the blended-intensive format is flanked by (…)
12. May 2024

Mark Malone will present on Monday 29th as part of the “Equality, Wellbeing and Platform Governance” Project
As part of her YUFE research project on Equality, Wellbeing and Platform Governance, fellow Dr Paloma Viejo has invited researcher and activist Mark Malone who will present on Monday 29th April at 14:00hs in room SFG 1040 a talk about the emergence of reactionary and far right activity in Ireland, specifically on themes of anti-migrant, (…)
23. April 2024

REMIT Roundtable on the UN Global Digital Compact
On Thursday, April 25, 2024, a public roundtable on the United Nations Global Digital Compact will take place at 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the House of Science in Bremen. The Global Digital Compact is currently being negotiated by the UN member states; a first draft text was published in early April. The roundtable is (…)
19. April 2024

New research article: Imperfect Automation and the Human Fix
Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach and Dr. Paloma Viejo Otero from the “Platform Governance, Media and Technology” Lab at the University of Bremen in collaboration with Leipzig University member Prof. Dr. Christian Pentzold have published a new open access article in the Human-Machine Communication Journal titled: “Smoothing Out Smart Tech’s Rough Edges: Imperfect Automation and the (…)
16. April 2024