Dr. Paloma Viejo Otero

Dr Paloma Viejo Otero is a media and communications scholar whose research sits at the intersection of platform governance, digital cultures, and community media. She holds a PhD from Dublin City University, an MPhil in Race, Ethnicity, and Conflict from Trinity College Dublin, and an MA in Culture Studies from the Instituto de Filosofía Ortega y Gasset at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has held research  positions at DCU’s National Anti-Bullying Centre and through the YUFE fellowship programme  at the University of Bremen (ZeMKI), as well as a Visiting Professorship at Viadrina University Frankfurt (Oder), where she served as Chair of Digital Governance.

Her path into academia is shaped by extensive professional practice across Europe, Sudan, and Guatemala. As Cultural Officer for the Spanish Agency of International Development Cooperation (AECID), she established a Culture and University Development office at the Spanish Embassy in Khartoum, co-designing educational programming with the University of Khartoum and documenting grassroots community media initiatives. In Guatemala City, she worked alongside communities using digital media infrastructures as essential tools for civic life and local communication. These experiences, alongside institutional work at UNESCO , the Council of Europe and NGO sector gave her a grounded understanding of how communities build, govern, and sustain their own media infrastructures,  questions that continue to animate her research today.

Her earlier research focused on hate speech governance and platform power, culminating in her monograph Platform Governance and Social Justice: Governing Hate Speech on Social Media (Emerald, 2025). This work examined how major platforms approach hate speech — spanning from free speech absolutism and neutral approaches to social justice frameworks — and how those decisions embed particular political and social values.

Her current research follows a natural arc from that work: having studied how dominant platforms govern speech, she now examines how communities outside the mainstream tech order govern their own digital spaces. This research focuses on digital sovereignty from below and Networks Commons.

She is co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Global Platform Governance (De Gruyter).  Her work is distinguished by a sustained commitment to understanding how culture is embedded in technology, and how it is governed and contested — across institutions, communities, and geographies.

Research Interests

• Platform-Governance
• Hatespeech
• historical oppression
• Inequality
• Discrimination
• Segregation

Memberships

• Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
• International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)

Publications

Viejo Otero, P. & Rikic, M. (in press 2026). Existential robotics: The mediatisation of care and the automation of intimacy. In K. Kopecka-Piech (Ed.), A research agenda for mediatisation. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Siapera, E., Katzenbach, C., Magalhães, J. C. & Viejo Otero, P. (Eds.) (in production 2027). Handbook on Global Platform Governance. De Gruyter.

Viejo Otero, P. (2025). Platform Governance and Social Justice: Governing Hate Speech on Social Media (Digital Activism and Society: Politics, Economy and Culture in Network Communication). Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds.

Viejo Otero, P. & Scharlach, R. (2025). We do not marshal your feed. How Alt Tech platforms conceptualised safety. Platforms & Society, SAGE.

Katzenbach, C., Pentzold, C. & Viejo Otero, P. (2024). Smoothing out Smart Tech’s rough edges: Imperfect automation and the human fix. Human-Machine Communication, 7(1), 2.

Katzenbach, C., Dergacheva, D., Fischer, A., Kopps, A., Kolesnikov, S., Redeker, D. & Viejo Otero, P. (2023). Platform Governance Archive (PGA): Dataset PGA v2 [Data Paper].

O’Higgins Norman, J., Viejo Otero, P., Canning, C., Kinehan, A., Heaney, D. & Sargioti, A. (2023). FUSE anti-bullying and online safety programme: measuring self-efficacy amongst post-primary students. Irish Educational Studies, 43(4), 865–882. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2023.2174573

Sargioti, A., Kuldas, S., Foody, M., Viejo Otero, P., Kinahan, A., Canning, C., … & O’Higgins Norman, J. (2022). Dublin anti-bullying self-efficacy models and scales: development and validation. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 38(7–8). https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605221127193

Viejo Otero, P. (2022). Governing hate: Facebook and hate speech. Doctoral dissertation, DORAS, Dublin City University.

Siapera, E. & Viejo Otero, P. (2021). Governing hate: Facebook and digital racism. Television & New Media, 112–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476420982232

Viejo Otero, P. (2021). How the Donald Trump years have changed Facebook. RTÉ Brainstorm, 19 January. https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2021/0119/1190648-donald-trump-mark-zuckerberg-facebook/

Viejo Otero, P. (2020). Guide to Understanding Hate Speech. Eskura, Ayuntamiento de San Sebastián, Basque Country. Translated into Euskera, English and Spanish. https://searchlibrary.ohchr.org/record/29540?ln=en

Siapera, E., Moreo, E. & Viejo Otero, P. (2019). Race on the digital space. In R. Lentin (Ed.). https://inar.ie/race-in-thedigital-sphere/

Viejo Otero, P. (2017). Hate speech in social media. In Felice, C. & Ettema, M. (Eds.), We Can! Taking Action against Hate Speech through Counter and Alternative Narratives. Council of Europe. (Translated into 27 languages.)

Viejo Otero, P. (2017). How social media impacts on online racism and hate speech. RTÉ Brainstorm, 10 November. https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2017/1107/918190-how-social-media-impacts-on-online-racism-and-hate-speech/

Conferences and Invited Talks (selected)

Viejo Otero, P. (2026, accepted). What persists: Persistence as a theoretical framework for alternativity. EASST, AGH University of Krakow, Poland.

Viejo Otero, P. & Siapera, E. (2026, accepted). Community mesh networks and European digital sovereignty. Data Justice Lab Conference, Cardiff University.

Viejo Otero, P. Ferries, E.; Siapera. E.; Foglia, E. (2026, accepted). Cosmological and organizational continuities and discontinuities of Guifi.net. Statecraft, Sovereignty, and Digital Government Symposium, Goldsmiths University, London.

Viejo Otero, P. And Siapera , E. (2026, accepted). Against the tide. Media persistence through big tech enclosures (2005–2025). International Communication Association (ICA), Cape Town.

Viejo Otero, P.  (2025). We do not marshal your feed. AoIR FlashPoint, Bremen, Germany.

Viejo Otero, P. (2024). Beyond mainstream industry: Unveiling a social justice approach to platform governance. AoIR, Sheffield, UK.

Viejo Otero, P. (2024). The transformation of hate speech policies through platform governance. ECREA, Ljubljana.

Viejo Otero, P. (2024). We do not marshal your feed. Alt Tech platforms. Social Media and Society, London, UK.

Viejo Otero, P. (2023). Harmful online communication. GESIS, Cologne. (Guest Speaker.)

Viejo Otero, P. (2022). AI and human content moderators. An ethnographic approach. AoIR, Dublin, Ireland.

Siapera, E. & Viejo Otero, P. (2021). Content moderation and external stakeholders: Platform governance and the role of experts. First Platform Governance Conference, online.

Viejo Otero, P. (2021). El discurso del odio en las redes sociales: Una perspectiva tecnológica. II Congreso sobre Igualdad de Trato y No Discriminación, Biltzen, Basque Country. (Guest Speaker.)

Viejo Otero, P. (2020). Como combatir el discurso del odio en las redes sociales. ESKURA, País Vasco. (Guest Speaker.)

Viejo Otero, P. & Siapera, E. (2019). Governing hate: Facebook and the productivity of hate speech. IAMCR, Madrid, Spain.

Siapera, E. & Viejo Otero, P. (2018). Hate speech in online environments. International Communication Association (ICA), Prague.

Viejo Otero, P. (2018). What is hate? A historical materialistic perspective. Sociology Department, Trinity College Dublin.(Guest Speaker.)

Viejo Otero, P. (2018). The historical materialistic definition of hate speech. SOAS, London. (Guest Lecturer.)

Siapera, E. & Viejo Otero, P. (2016). What is the role of social media corporations in regulating hate speech? AoIR, Berlin, Germany.

Viejo Otero, P. (2016). Hate speech and social media: Corporative hate speech. ESARN18 Rethinking Power in Communicative Capitalism, Lisbon, Portugal.

Viejo Otero, P. (2015). How do the far-right movements and parties use the internet and social media? Digital Facebook postcards: ‘with hate, your far-right’. ICTs and Society Conference, Vienna, Austria.