The Role of Platforms in Internet Governance: Approaches to Disinformation in 11 European Countries

With the emergence of phenomena such as fake news, manipulative propaganda and disinformation, the debate around the role and accountability of social media platforms gained relevance. Most actions to contrast those phenomena undertaken by institutions are aimed at limiting the damages of disinformation, which is perceived as an exogenous threat coming from outside the democratic arena (i.e. from third countries like Russia or from terrorist groups). At the same time, while recognizing that such a threat cannot be neutralized by intervening directly on the instigators, European countries are demanding to social media platforms to act as control intermediaries, putting in place mechanisms to detect and marginalize manipulative contents, also through algorithms and artificial intelligence. This determines a double shift in a) the responsibility of disinformation, from the journalistic sources to the socio-technical outlets through which disinformation spread, and b) the control over such mechanisms, from public authorities to private companies. The article compares the policies issued by 11 European countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Sweden and UK) to contrast online disinformation. Countries have been selected by considering different models of media accountability (that is: of relationship between media and public authorities). By adopting a content analysis technique that investigates principles, actors and instruments, four models of platforms accountability are outlined: accountability set by law, co-decided accountability, regulated self-regulation and pure self-regulation. The results suggest that most of the 11 countries covered maintains a specific position towards the role of digital media in the society. At the same time, some patterns of convergence are highlighted: the weakening of State control in favor of freedom of information; the enhancement of transparency of social platforms’ activities related to politics, as a guiding principle to ensure public monitoring; the standardization of a multistakeholder model of co-regulation. The article also focuses on the technological dimension of social platforms accountability, allowing to recognize how much different models rely on algorithms. Moving from this point, it problematizes limitations and risks of social platforms’ accountability.