New regulators of the online public space: challenges or opportunities for the political mobilization of marginalized communities?

Online platforms such as social media and different discussion forums have become central venues for the political mobilization of marginalized groups, such as feminist, LGBTQ+ and anti-racists groups. This is not least the case for groups with intersecting marginalized identities for whom online platforms have become indispensable tools for finding each other and engage in socialization and communication, both amongst each other and towards wider audiences. While it has been shown that the affordances of online platforms offer new possibilities to mobilize politically, the governance strategies of platforms have been argued to create uneven and contradictory rules and standards, that in particular have affected the room of maneuver for marginalized groups (e.g. Duguay et al. 2018). Previous platform regulations were mainly voluntarily ones adopted by platforms themselves, such as Facebook’s “Community Standards” or other types of codes of conduct. Now, more and more (democratic) states are adopting legislation that specifically targets the regulation of big tech companies, including content moderation. This contribution therefore explores how emerging regimes of platform governance affect the political mobilization of marginalized groups: Do inequalities/room of online maneuver vary between different groups of political activists? Have these inequalities been reinforced through increased state regulation? Do they differ between different national contexts with different regulatory approaches to platform governance? To answer these questions, we conduct interviews with political activists from feminist and LGBTQ+ groups in two of the national contexts that have differed greatly in their regulatory approaches, namely Sweden and Germany. The interviews focus on to what extent and how the activists perceive to be impacted by different regulatory regimes, and how they navigate and strategize in order to retain their room of maneuver despite platform regulations. The study thereby contributes to an increased understanding of the consequences of platform regulations for the political mobilization of intersectionally marginalized groups, which not least can have important policy implications for how platforms should be governed by democratic states in order to not silence the voices of some of society’s most marginalized groups.