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News outlets have responded to platforms disrupting audience engagement and revenue models by pursuing more stable revenue through paywall subscriptions and membership programs. However, many outlets continue to struggle, and scholars have suggested that outlets experiment with data monetization strategies by asking readers to "pay" with their data – in other words, by implementing a "datawall." We conducted an exploratory landscape analysis of digital news websites and interviewed digital news professionals to evaluate the extent to which datawalls actually exist in the field and to investigate the roles of platformization and datafication. We found that datawalls exist on a spectrum with a complicated relationship to paywalls and that platforms play an important role in the emergence of datawalls that calls for extending the existing conceptual model of platformization. We argue that datawalls represent attempts to adopt platform logics by accumulating audience data; thus, platforms serve as templates for digital news outlets. We discuss the implications of these findings for conceptualizing platformization and datafication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines civil society engagement with the 2016–2020 Airbnb and Facebook civil rights audits as counterpublic strategies to address discriminatory harms on platforms. Drawing on critical theories of (counter)publics, care work, and civil rights, we explore (1) civil society organizations' negotiations with various stakeholders in the audits, (2) the perceived utility of the audits as a platform governance mechanism, and (3) motivations behind using a civil rights framework for auditing platforms. Based on interviews and textual analysis, we find that civil society used dualistic strategies, working with and against platforms to navigate corporate and government neglect of digital harms to marginalized communities and negotiate asymmetric power structures. Groups used the audits to urge platforms to respect civil rights law while asking them to address areas beyond the existing law. They also mobilized the audits to achieve immediate 'harm reduction' from the platforms while simultaneously advocating for government regulation by demonstrating the audits' limitations. In the process, the civil society counterpublic faced challenges from the externalization of responsibility by platforms and the co-option and politicization of civil rights. As a result, we argue, the utility of the audits may ultimately lie in how their limitations and failure can be used by counterpublics to rearticulate responsibility for harm to marginalized communities in platform governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on social media has prompted democratic countries around the world to discuss adequate regulations to limit the power exerted by platforms over national politics. As a result, the once ostensibly uniform content moderation practices of social media companies are becoming increasingly territorialized, and the governance of online political speech is constantly negotiated between global social media platforms and national governments. To comprehend the evolving landscape of online political speech governance, this paper scrutinizes how Facebook has adapted its content moderation practices to the political and legal contexts of three democratic nations: the United States, Germany, and South Korea. We assessed national laws and governmental documents to explain the regulatory landscapes of the three countries, and used VPNs and corporate PR materials to see how Facebook's platform design and public communication diverge by location. The findings suggest that the seemingly 'splintering' regulatory frameworks still have a 'centralizing' effect: Facebook formally complies with national laws, but its platform interface and communication activities steer users away from the local systems and towards its centralized operations. We discuss future implications for the regulation of online political speech in democratic nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital contact tracing has been claimed as imperative to controlling the spread of COVID-19. However, the state-by-state approach in the United States led to divergences in contact tracing. This study analyzed contact-tracing apps as "boundary objects" through which each state worked toward the governance of the pandemic without having a formal consensus. Through media coverage and walkthrough analyses of three digital contacttracing apps in Alabama, California, and New York, we closely investigated both convergences and divergences of the apps. In the process, we located the implications of Google/Apple's Bluetooth-based exposure notification system for digital contact tracing within and beyond state boundaries. Our findings suggest that the development of apps shared the notion of an ideal contact-tracing method--exposure notification--while each state was also situated in their local experiences of the pandemic as reflected in distinct app features. We further discuss the implications of techno-solutionist standardization of such digital contact-tracing apps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how emerging US data privacy regulations are discussed at state and federal levels, examining Twitter discourse around Senate public hearings on data privacy and public forums on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The recent legal steps reflect growing public outcry over corporate data misuses and lack of appropriate legislation. The findings suggest that the issue public of Twitter users in this study largely considered corporations and the government as untrustworthy actors for privacy legislation. The political distrust was raising doubts over regulatory capture and if a future US federal privacy law will be weaker than state laws (e.g., CCPA) while overriding them. The study explores implications of the findings on the current deadlock over the state preemption clause in developing a comprehensive federal privacy law. I argue that the emerging regulatory efforts on data privacy may not be effective unless the public trust in institutions is regained in the US and that the continuing absence of a federal law amid the political distrust can leave people with limited individual privacy strategies as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]