Designing a Coherent Framework for the Regulation of Internet Content

Abstract

The regulation of content is no longer a self-contained domain of governance, which was in most aspects reserved for the nation state. Now many other domains have become relevant, in more or less immediate ways. The linkages have only grown stronger as media consumption has moved from old to new media and the latter have become deeply integrated in everyday economic, cultural, political and social life. Next to the difficulty for regulators to grapple with new technologies, the governance challenge here stems from the often strikingly different regulatory histories, rationales for intervention and institutional structures of these previously separated policy domains, and renders regulatory design appropriate for the achievement of core public policy objectives extremely complex. A related phenomenon that can be observed is the growing 'messiness' of regulation, as it not only draws together horizontally different domains but is also unevenly vertically spread along a multi-layered structure that mobilizes various actors at the local, national, regional and international levels.