PlatGovNet 2025
Transitions, frictions and new realities in global platform governance
The PlatGovNet conference programme, held online 1-2 December, is now live. Anyone is most welcome to join to learn and discuss with platform governance leaders and researchers from around the world, including Trust and Safety leads from Bluesky and Reddit. The conference is organised by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Diyi Liu and Emillie de Keulenaar from the Centre for Tracking and Digital Society.
About the conference
Platform governance continues to grow in importance and intellectual vibrancy as an interdisciplinary field of research. A changing mix of competing platform companies faced with various efforts to regulate, influence, or control them and their offers has become an ever more central feature of many societies. As monolithic services begin to fracture and decentralised platform infrastructures emerge, some governments assert their power and authority, and new constellations of actors emerge; we witness not mere technical transitions but realignments in the political economy of platforms and societies. These changes manifest through multiple frictions across state, market, and civil society – between digital sovereignty and transnational platform operations, between established market leaders and nascent alternatives, between context and consistency, between regulatory intent and practice, and between pragmatic appraisals and normative aspirations. Understanding these transitions demands empirical analysis and may require new conceptual and methodological approaches.
Programme (PDF)