Platform Governance Survey 2022: A Global Study of Public Attitudes Towards Content Moderation

Principal Investigator: Dr. Dennis Redeker

Funding: Swiss Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM)

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok are the “new governors” (Klonick) or “custodians” (Gillespie) of the Internet. How they moderate global speech online affects the communication practices of billions of people and it can make or break social movements or be a critical risk factor for human rights violations. These platforms are increasingly joined by states, international organizations, civil society and journalists in defining and interpreting the limitations of speech online, be it through legislation, guidelines or by helping platforms to distinguish misinformation from legitimate content. Increasingly, questions are articulated about the legitimacy of these emerging governance regimes for online speech. However, empirical evidence concerning the attitudes of social media users about who should be entrusted with what role in content governance is scarce. 

The research project at ZeMKI aims to collect relevant public opinion data through the Platform Governance Survey 2022. Aimed to understand attitudes and preferences concerning content moderation, the survey is aimed at users of large social media platforms. Focusing on countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the data also allows comparison to attitudes in Europe and North America. The quantitative survey will be conducted in a number of languages in late 2022. The analysis will elucidate country-level, gender and age differences, and show, for instance, in which countries social media users are more inclined to accept a stronger role of the state in content moderation.