Abstract
This article explores how metaphors about what the internet is inform policymaker and industry discourses, when they propose solutions on internet safety. More specifically, it analyzes documents by key players in this debate during a period when the UK government proposed direct regulation of online harms. The study finds that policy documents construct the internet primarily as a “place” that is separate from offline experience; and to a smaller extent as a “tool” that can be abused if it falls in the wrong hands. The article argues that these constructions obscure any links between online and offline risk, and that they legitimize solutions which may not take into account the social roots of online harms. It also suggests that the discourses of policymakers and SNS companies differ in the degree of agency they attribute to users, indicating a discrepancy in their approaches as direct regulation is introduced in the UK.
Highlights
This article explores how metaphors about what the internet is inform policymaker and industry discourses, when they propose solutions on internet safety
The internet is increasingly an integral part of everyday life, the main metaphor used to describe it in the discourse of policymakers, regulators, and the industry is that of a place
At the same time though, when a metaphor becomes the standardized way of speaking about an issue, it constructs a system of meaning that pushes back other ways of understanding this issue
Summary
This article explores how metaphors about what the internet is inform policymaker and industry discourses, when they propose solutions on internet safety It analyzes documents by key players in this debate during a period when the UK government proposed direct regulation of online harms. The article uses discourse analysis to investigate how metaphor was used in selected documents published by the UK government, Ofcom (the UK’s telecommunications regulator), and two Social Network Services (SNS) companies, which operate both in the UK and internationally It suggests that these institutions do not construct online risk as a problem embedded in social experience, but as a phenomenon that happens somewhere else, in a separate online space. This is significant because our daily experience and interaction with the social world are increasingly mediated digitally (Carrington 2017; Fernback 2007)
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