Journal Article: “Platform governance and civil society organisations: Tensions between reform and revolution continuum” Siapera and Farries
07.04.25. Our Centre directors have been busy as usual, Prof Eugenia Siapera and Dr Elizabeth Farries have yet another publication to add to their already impressive repetoire.
In this work, Eugenia and Elizabeth examine the sometimes divergent platform governance roles of civil society within a broader neoliberal paradigm. As Badouard and Bellon (2025) write of the piece, they “place the powerlessness of civil society within a broader neoliberal paradigm. Delegating functions to third-party organisations does not necessarily mean delegating power to them, and the forms of multistakeholderism they study in the broader field of digital rights result in a strengthening of the power of platforms and public authorities.”
The abstract for this timely work states:
Focusing on the European context and the Digital Services Act, this article probes the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in platform governance. Theoretically, we locate CSOs within the paradigm of neoliberal governance, which aims to limit state power advancing a market-based rationality. Civil society is tasked with pushing against both state and markets, although in doing so it may end up upholding the terms of neoliberal governance. In this context, we ask, to what extent can digital rights CSOs fulfil their normative role and how do they participate in platform governance? Empirically, we rely on a set of in depth interviews with key informants from five leading EU digital rights CSOs, supported by autoethnography and document analysis. Our findings suggest that CSOs operate across what we refer as the ‘reform versus revolution’ continuum. While those closer to the ‘reform’ end aim to make incremental changes to improve platforms, those closer to the ‘revolution’ end take a more radical view aiming to dissolve platforms altogether. While this structuring division reflects positions that are critical in different ways, pragmatic issues around (i) values, principles and organisational aspects; (ii) financial dynamics including funding and sustainability; and (iii) CSO stakeholder relations with platforms, policy makers, and other CSOs, undermine CSOs’ ability to act effectively, let alone engage in a radical repositioning of platform governance terms and impacts.
Read the full article, open access, here.