Registration now open: DigiMeet 2025

Topic: Platform Governance & Power: Between control, ethics and societal dynamics

2025 – Platform Governance & Power

In an increasingly platform-centred digital world, the governance of platforms has become a critical tool in maintaining and expanding a democratic digital infrastructure in the EU and beyond. At the same time, these efforts are confronted with global policy challenges, as the platform landscape is rapidly transforming. DigiMeet 2025 aims to explore the latest developments in global platform governance, focusing on the underlying power dynamics, societal implications and technological advancements that shape our policy discourse.

Programme

09:30–10:00 | Welcome and Introduction, Greeting by Wolfgang Schulz (Director HBI)

10:00–11:00 | Keynote by Dr. Tobias Mast, Head of the research programme “Regulatory Structures and the Emergence of Rules in Online Spaces” at HBI, and member of the advisory board of the German Coordination Office for Digital Services at Bundesnetzagentur.

11:00 – 12:30 | Parallel Sessions

Track 1: Platform regulation and community building – Regulatory frameworks

Track 2: Platforms as shapers and instruments of governance – Opportunities and challenges of AI

12:30–13:30 | Lunch Break

13:30 – 13:45 | Kick-Start Afternoon Sessions with Martin Krzywdzinski (Director WI)

13:45 – 15:15 | Parallel Sessions

Track 1: Platform regulation and community building – Networks and discourses

Track 2: Platforms as shapers and instruments of governance – Platforms as governance facilitators

15:30 – 16:00 | Group debate – Visions for the ideal platform of the future

16:00 | Farewell and End
 

You can download the full programme here.
 

Registration (Deadline: 12.10.2025)

Please register here.

About DigiMeet

DigiMeet is the joint Digitalisation Research and Network Meeting hosted by the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), the Leibniz Institute for Media Research – Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI), and the Weizenbaum Institute (WI). It’s an interdisciplinary forum designed specifically for early career researchers with a focus on digitalization-related topics. DigiMeet offers opportunities for networking, discussing results and ideas, and gathering inspiration for new and ideally collaborative research projects.

About the Convening Institutions

bidt: As an institute of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt) contributes to a better understanding of the developments and challenges in digital transformation. In doing so, we lay the foundations to shape the digital future in dialogue with society responsibly and for the common good.

CAIS: The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in North Rhine-Westphalia promotes the active shaping of the social, political, economic, and cultural changes that digitalization brings about. The Center sees itself as a place for innovative interdisciplinary research and as a source of inspiration for a critical public that wants to find agreement on models for a self-determined life in the digital society.

HBI: The Leibniz Institute for Media Research – Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) examines media change and the related structural shifts in public communication. It combines basic research and research on knowledge transfer from cross-media, interdisciplinary and independent scholarly perspectives. Thus, the institute is a valued provider of problem-specific knowledge for politics, commerce and civil society.

WI: The Weizenbaum-Institute for Networked Society (WI) is the German Internet Institute, a place of excellent research on the transformation and design processes of digital change. In the spirit of Joseph Weizenbaum, we research the necessary framework conditions, means and processes for individual and social self-determination in a networked society. We understand self-determination as a design principle that is central to the preservation of human dignity and democracy.