Platform Governance from the Global South

While a growing proportion of the customer base of global platforms comprises users in countries the Global South including countries such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, and The Philippines, much of the scholarship on platform governance and content moderation is focused on concerns framed from the perspective of laws, policies and technological and infrastructural conditions in the United States and Europe. Global South contexts in which global digital platforms operate are marked by distinct political, social, and technological conditions such as a history of colonial law and regulation and efforts by state authorities to regulate platforms to limit political dissent and inter-group tensions and based on public order. Many Global South contexts are marked by high levels of inequality and ongoing developmental efforts by states that involve building digital infrastructures meant to deliver public services and facilitate private financial services. Global platform companies have benefited from the increasing digitisation of infrastructures in the Global South, leading to a growing number of users in these jurisdictions. 

Focusing on the platform governance in Global South contexts will help redirect research questions and agendas in the field. For instance, since bigger global platforms have instituted governance measures to address harms on their platforms in response to increasing pressure from regulators and governments, many users in Global South contexts are now taking advantage of the relatively lax content moderation rules and governance mechanisms on smaller platforms. These platforms have designed their platforms to be attractive to different demographic groups including regional language users and younger users who prefer audio-visual and multimodal forms of content. Some of these platforms have appealed to nationalist and populist sentiments of users reflected in the policies of governments in parts of the Global South.

While many of the themes that this project addresses are not limited to Global South contexts, approaching platform governance from a Global South perspective allows for insights that have emerged from contexts outside of the United States and Europe. Approaching platform governance with reference to Global South contexts helps highlight increasing tensions between governance policies of big platforms and specific local contexts.   
Bringing a Global South perspective to contemporary debates on platform governance allows for an exploration of commonalities and comparisons between developments in the field between countries of the Global South contexts and enables new sites of enquiry that extend beyond the bigger global platforms.