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Online platforms train users to interact with each other through certain widespread interface designs. This article argues that an "implicit feudalism" informs the available options for community management on the dominant platforms for online communities. It is a pattern that grants user-administrators absolutist reign over their fiefdoms, with competition among them as the primary mechanism for quality control, typically under rules set by platform companies. Implicit feudalism emerged from technical conditions dating to early online networks. In light of alternative management mechanisms with more democratic features, it becomes all the more clear that implicit feudalism is not a necessary condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks to what extent the European Commission's stakeholder participation model takes into account non-expert citizen contributions in policy processes pertaining to copyright. In theory, the increasing scale of citizen engagement in stakeholder consultations on copyright could help address the EU's democratic deficit. The paper analyses the European Commission's consultation processes in copyright policy across the Barroso 1&2 and Juncker Commissions (2004–2019). It documents the scale and the type of stakeholder involvement in public consultations. Through expert interviews and a survey, the paper gives critical insight into stakeholders' perception of the Commission's consultation practices and citizens' role in policymaking. It concludes that the Commission is inclusive of different types of stakeholders, but casts doubt on the (perceived) motivation and appropriateness of its stakeholder participation model for non-expert citizens. The paper thus sheds light on the attempts and the struggle to engage with citizens in a digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fake news crisis has raised questions about the role of state regulation in curbing misinformation, as well as the responsibilities tech companies should shoulder. In engaging with debates on digital governance, this article has two key focuses: first, what are the problems associated with the lack of state regulations in the digital sphere – where technology companies have unprecedented control over online public discourses? Next, how can states ensure that online regulations are measured, and continue to respect important liberties? This essay argues that the lack of regulation over tech firms has led to arbitrary censorship, conflict of interest issues and a legitimacy gap, with adverse societal consequences. Next, through a case study of contemporary fake news responses advanced by the Thai government, it empirically examines concerns associated with state-led initiatives to regulate misinformation on social media. Overall, while advocating for increased regulation over the online sphere, this article argues that regulations which equate the concept of fake news to illegality are not optimal as they are likely to undercut societal liberties. Implementing robust transparency mechanisms over tech companies represents a valuable first step that should be undertaken before further attempts to advance coercive legislation establishing the state as the sole arbiter of truth are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online settings have been suggested as viable sites for youth to develop social, emotional, and technical skills that can positively shape their behavior online. However, little work has been done to understand how online governance structures might support (or hinder) such learning. Using mixed-methods research, we report findings from a 2-year, in-the-wild study of 8-13 year olds on a custom multiplayer Minecraft server. The two-part study focuses on the design of youth-centered models of community governance drawn from evidence-based offline practices in the prevention and learning sciences. Preliminary results point to a set of socio-technical design approaches shaping player behavior while also supporting youth interest inMinecraftlike online environments. More broadly, the findings suggest an alternative vision of youth's capacity for ownership and control of mechanisms shaping the culture and climate of their online communities: managing player behavior while challenging current norms around adult control and surveillance of youth activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the problems they face, online communities adopt comprehensive governance methods including committees, boards, juries, and even more complex institutional logics. Helping these kinds of communities succeed will require categorizing best practices and creating toolboxes that fit the needs of specific communities. Beyond such applied uses, there is also a potential for an institutional logic itself to evolve, taking advantage of feedback provided by the fast pace and large ecosystem of online communication. Here, we outline an experimental strategy aiming at guiding and facilitating such an evolution. We first review the advantages of studying collective action using recent technologies for efficiently orchestrating massive online experiments. Research in this vein includes attempts to understand how behavior spreads, how cooperation evolves, and how the wisdom of the crowd can be improved. We then present the potential usefulness of developing virtual-world experiments with governance for improving the utility of social feedback. Such experiments can be used for improving community rating systems and monitoring (dashboard) systems. Finally, we present a framework for constructing large-scale experiments entirely in virtual worlds, aimed at capturing the complexity of governance dynamics, to empirically test outcomes of manipulating institutional logic.

In online environments, the issues of governance, privacy and security are in a state of emergence, with consensus on institutional frameworks and practices not yet settled. The dynamic relations between governments, corporations and citizens are being renegotiated through the algorithmic formations of data mining and through contract law in the form of End User Licence Agreements. To analyse how the current practices and discourses associated with the socio-technical assemblages of online social worlds work within the broader political economy this article considers discourses associated with risk and security (Dean 2010), practices and discourses associated with algorithms (Gillespie forthcoming 2014) and the new shape of 'predictive surveillance' in the form of panspectralism (Palmås 2011). The emerging patterns of governance through contractual law and algorithms are enabling the discursive construction of a differently balanced set of relations between citizens, governments and corporations. The overlapping interests of these stakeholders are considered, and the strong alliances between corporations and the security arms of governments are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]