Abstract

ABSTRACT Social media exhibits the core characteristics of emergent technologies. It is disruptive of established ways of organising social relations, is evolving at an exponential pace and its effects, including the production of new ‘goods’ and ‘bads’, are highly uncertain. Interest in understanding these effects has intensified in the context of fears over so-called ‘digital wildfire’, a policy construct referring to rapid propagation of harmful communications, particularly those involving children and other vulnerable social groups but also those threatening the integrity of the political process in liberal democracies. Even so, proponents of social media are anxious to protect its potential for enhancing freedom of speech and revitalising civil society through the redistribution of editorial powers to shape public debate and facilitate the democratic scrutiny and oversight of elites. This article reports findings of the ‘Digital Wildfire policy Delphi’, which asked key informants to consider the political and technical feasibility of regulating harmful social media communications and to forecast likely scenarios for their prospective governance. Key forecasts are that forms of enforcement are limited, stimulating ‘self-regulation’ will become increasingly important but, more controversially, the likelihood is that harm to vulnerable groups will be ‘accommodated’ in liberal democracies as a price to be paid for the perceived political and economic benefits of unmoderated social media. The article concludes with conjectures about future directions in the policing of social media and their implications for shaping the emerging research agenda.

Highlights

  • The governance and regulation of social media communications is a contemporary issue of technical and political controversy

  • The Digital Wildfire policy Delphi conducted interdisciplinary analyses of malicious social media communications and their impact to determine whether risks presented by these communications necessitate new forms of social media governance

  • A key finding from analysis of sequential Twitter ‘threads’, referring to interactions between micro-bloggers retweeting, mentioning and responding to provocative posts, is their heterogeneity: they may agree, disagree, praise, criticise, echo and request further information in their responses (Housley et al 2018, Procter et al 2019). This interactional analysis emphasises the vitality and potential for self-regulation of malicious communications amongst ‘produsers’9 of social media. These findings suggest that users of social media are amongst the most potent governors of abusive communications, intervening to challenge and correct inflammatory content or unsubstantiated rumour (Housley et al 2018)

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Summary

Introduction

The governance and regulation of social media communications is a contemporary issue of technical and political controversy. Such forecasting does not seek to predict specific events but to identify a range of plausible scenarios that can provide defensible grounds for the anticipatory governance of uncertain social problems This enables nuanced discussion that acknowledges the kinds of strategic dilemmas noted above and accommodates the changing properties of social problems, such as the goods and bads of emergent technologies, provoking debate over policy responses that address harmful consequences without compromising perceived benefits. To this end, the Digital Wildfire policy Delphi conducted interdisciplinary analyses of malicious social media communications and their impact to determine whether risks presented by these communications necessitate new forms of social media governance. Nonenforcement is considered in terms of the likelihood of harms, even to vulnerable social groups, being ‘accommodated’ as an acceptable cost for the perceived benefits of these technologies

Methodological approach: the policy Delphi
Research strategy and conceptual framework
Research propositions
Research design
Research methods
Findings
The technical and political feasibility of governing social media
Forecasting: future scenarios for the governance of harmful social media
Conclusion: social media and the policing of emergent technologies
Enlightened self-regulation
Non-enforcement and ‘digital gangsterism’
Restrictions on freedom of speech
Future research directions
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