DNRF Chair Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is a professor of communication whose research focuses on the changing role of news and media in society. The aim of this project is to understand how power is exercised over platform companies such as Google, Meta, and their competitors by actors who have neither raw economic nor formal regulatory or legislative means. The research focuses on how civil society groups, interest groups, professional associations, and companies from other sectors sometimes actively try to shape how platform companies operate.

By focusing on attempts at platform governance in the space between the market and the state, “Power over Platforms” goes beyond state-of-the-art research, which primarily focuses on platforms as cultural institutions (in communication research and media studies), as companies (in business studies), and as the subjects of formal regulation (in legal studies).

Systematically analyzing the actors involved in trying to influence key decisions made by different platforms on key issues—content moderation, privacy, and the use of generative AI for political information and speech—across different jurisdictions (the US and UK as major markets outside the EU, and Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark as key markets inside the EU), and across different platforms (primarily consumer-facing content platforms, including Google, Meta, and their smaller competitors TikTok, X, Snapchat, and Reddit), the project sets out to identify who seeks to influence platform governance, how, and what the outcomes are across countries and across companies.

It will expand our scientific understanding of platform governance and provide insights that can, in turn, help inform public and policy discussions about how to respond to the role that platform companies play in a range of important areas in our society.