From Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘public realm’ to Jürgen Habermas’s ‘public sphere’ and the ‘public square’ doctrine established in the United States, democracy has long been associated with a shared news and information space, essential for a common reality and democratic deliberation. Today, maintaining such a shared public information space is becoming increasingly challenging. Technology companies provide the key infrastructure of this space, rendering it commercially structured, increasingly fragmented, and frequently subject to manipulation.

Despite variations across countries, a core goal of media governance in democratic societies is to mitigate undue influence and prevent the dominance of any single power in the information sphere. Technology companies, now wielding far greater power than traditional media and challenging it on both conceptual and economic fronts, operate under a distinct regulatory framework that continues to evolve and steadily expand.

This Research Topic seeks to examine whether, and how, recent regulatory initiatives and practices can alter the current trajectory towards revitalizing a viable public information space. Specifically, this Research Topic aims to explore how media governance is evolving in the contemporary information environment, and how big tech should be governed to safeguard both the human right to freedom of expression and the potential for a shared reality and a pluralistic, viable news and information space. Through cross-disciplinary contributions, we aim to advance our understanding of the legal, economic, social, and political conditions needed for a viable public sphere that serves democracy. We further aim to analyze available or ongoing regulatory interventions in various parts of the world that seek to mitigate the risks posed by the disruptive and dominant role of technology companies in the news and information space.

We are particularly interested in contributions that shift from a risk-based approach to a rights-based approach, and that analyze innovative solutions in law-making and practice aimed at restoring or reinventing the public sphere.

We welcome a wide range of submissions from across disciplines that address media and big tech governance from various perspectives, including, but not limited to, the following areas:

• evolving the metaphor of a ‘public sphere’ or a ‘public square’ in the contemporary information environment
• reconsidering media governance as the information sphere becomes increasingly controlled by technology companies
• addressing power imbalances between the media and big tech
• addressing liability imbalances between the media and big tech
• policies on the visibility and viability of journalistic content on online platforms
• governance of artificial intelligence
• challenges and opportunities of risk-based vs rights-based approaches
• policies and practices for dependencies on big tech and providing alternatives
• weaponization of freedom of expression and information integrity
• geopolitics of media and big tech governance
• different constitutional theories and approaches to platform governance (for example, in the United States, digital platforms may claim First Amendment protections and, by extension, certain editorial rights, which reveals a distinctive convergence with traditional media governance under U.S. constitutional law. In other regions, including Europe and Latin America, the legal frameworks governing media and platform regulation may differ significantly).

Information and Instructions for Authors

This Research Topic accepts any of the article types listed below, except for Editorial (Editorials are submitted exclusively by the Topic Editors).

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Media and Big Tech Governance for the Public Sphere