Protecting Democracy and the Public Sphere

The Mitigation of ‘Systemic Risks’ in Platform Regulation

Online platforms are the ‘new governors’ of our digital public sphere. This notion is central to the EU’s sweeping Digital Services Act (DSA) which, after coming into full force and effect on 17 February 2024, aims to foster a safer, more predictable, and trustworthy online environment for all EU Member States. Articles 34 and 35 of this professed ‘constitution of the Internet’ require large privately-owned digital intermediaries (eg Meta (formerly Facebook), X (formerly Twitter)) to identify and mitigate their ‘systemic risks’ to online discourse and electoral processes. Yet despite its civic-minded objectives, the DSA is silent on what ‘systemic risks’ are and how they should be regulated.
This doctoral project responds to these definitional and operational uncertainties by investigating the increasing normative conflicts between speech regulation, privatised power, and corporate responsibility. It aims to do so through a statutory and doctrinal analysis of the DSA and its foundational values. Rejecting the notion that this risk mitigation framework is only meant as a conversation-starter, the project will explore ways in which the DSA can lead to meaningful accountability in the digital sphere. Expected knowledge outcomes include providing guidance for legally compliant and democratically-compatible platform content moderation, and laying the foundation for the regulation of structural changes to a platform and its provider.
While this project resonates with each component of the Public Law Department’s tripartite research agenda, its overall focus reflects the second axis dedicated to exploring the regulatory implications of public security law’s three major trends of internationalisation, digitalisation, and fragmentation.