Full Description
Digital technologies have rapidly become integral to communities and societies, bringing both significant benefits and serious concerns. Issues such as misinformation, disinformation, online polarization, discrimination, and widening inequalities have prompted a critical and urgent debate: Can digital societies still be effectively governed? This book brings together insights from various disciplines to address the pressing question: "How can we develop and apply principles of (good) governance in digital societies that are organized democracies?"
Governing the Digital Societypresents a range of governance approaches, focusing on online platforms, artificial intelligence, and the public values that underpin these technologies. The authors position themselves at the forefront of their disciplines, offering perspectives from law, critical data studies, urban studies, science and technology studies, computational linguistics, and the political economy of media. Expert interviews provide additional insights into ongoing efforts to tackle the challenges of governing digital societies. The book demonstrates that governance is not just a technical or legal process but a complex societal one, embedding norms, values, and morality into our institutions and daily lives.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
About the Authors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Governing the Digital Society
Section 1: Governing Platforms
Decentralized Online Social Networks: Technological and Organizational Choices and Their Public Value Trade-offs, Mathilde Sanders and José van Dijck
Platform cooperatives as an additional strategy for empowering platform workers, Gabriël van Rosmalen
Governing the 'Third Half of the Internet': The Dynamics of Human and AI-assisted Content Moderation, Cedric Waterschoot
Constitutional Aspects of Trusted Flaggers in The Netherlands, Jacob van de Kerkhof
Interview with Catalina Goanta, by Taylor Annabell
Section 2: Governing Artificial Intelligence
Governing the Global Proliferation of Digital Surveillance Technologies: Lessons from the EU, Machiko Kanetake
The Governance of Generative AI: Three Conditions for Research and Policy, Fabian Ferrari
The Long-term Usefulness of Regulating AI in the EU, Lisanne Hummel
Interview with Natali Helberger, by Fabian Ferrari
Section 3: Governing Public Values
The Techno-Politics of Conversational AI's Moral Agency: Examining ChatGPT and ErnieBot as Examples, Jing Zeng and Karin van Es
Doing Inclusion: Negotiation and Co-creation for People-centric Smart Cities, Michiel de Lange, Erna Ruijer and Krisztina Varró
Motherhood in the Datafied Welfare State: Investigating the Gendered and Racialized Enactment of Citizenship in Dutch Algorithmic Governance, Gerwin van Schie, Laura Candidatu and Diletta Huyskes
Fostering Autonomy in the Digital Classroom: Strengthening Schools' Control over Data and Pedagogy through Collective Action, Niels Kerssens and Karin van Es
Interview with Janneke Gerards, by Viktorija Morozovaite
Concluding comments: An assessment of governing the digital society, Albert Meijer
Index
