Digitalisation Research and Network Meeting (DigiMeet 2025)

Call for Participation DigiMeet

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

The main purpose of this interdisciplinary event is to provide a forum for early career researchers with a focus on digitalisation-related topics. DigiMeet offers opportunities for networking, discussing results and ideas, and gathering inspiration for new and ideally collaborative research projects.

Each year, our networking event addresses a topic that can be understood as a key concept in the ethical and human-centred design of digital transformation. 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. Through the lens of four subtopics, we seek to approach the focus topic from different perspectives:

Track 1: Platform regulation and community building

Morning Session: Regulatory frameworks (Chair: Matthias Kettemann, HBI)

This session will delve into the regulatory frameworks that seek to balance democratic values with the necessity of control in the digital space. We will examine how European regulations, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), aspire to uphold democratic principles while also addressing the challenges posed by misinformation, privacy and monopolistic behaviours of tech giants. The discussion will highlight the tensions between accountability and freedom, as well as the implications for citizens' rights in a digital age.

Afternoon Session: Networks and discourses (Chair: Andreas Jungherr, Uni Bamberg)

Social media platforms transform how people connect and engage in public discourse, offering empowerment and collective action while also spreading misinformation. They enable communities to form around shared interests, fostering activism and social change. However, engagement-driven algorithms amplify sensationalist content, reinforcing biases and deepening divides. Tackling these challenges demands both platform accountability and user awareness.

Track 2: Platforms as shapers and instruments of governance

Morning Session: Opportunities and challenges of AI (Chair: Tim Majchrzak, CAIS)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a pivotal role in shaping platform governance. This session will investigate how AI technologies are utilised for content moderation, user engagement and decision-making processes within platforms. We will discuss the ethical implications of AI deployment, including transparency, accountability and bias. Moreover, the session will consider how AI can be harnessed to enhance governance mechanisms while ensuring that democratic values are upheld in an increasingly automated environment.

Afternoon Session: Platforms as governance facilitators (Chair: Annett Schulze, WI)

Platforms have emerged not only as commercial entities and social networks but also as vital instruments for governance, for example in crisis management contexts. This segment will focus on how platforms can facilitate communication, mobilisation, and resource allocation during crises such as pandemics, natural disasters or social unrest. We will analyse case studies that illustrate the dual role of platforms as shapers of public discourse and as tools for (governmental) action, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that arise from this duality.

Programme

The meeting will start with a morning keynote by Dr. Tobias Mast. Tobias Mast is 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.

Afterwards, participants will present their research in one of the four sessions, which will be set up according to the submitted topics. Each session will be chaired by an expert from the convening institutions (see above). After a short introduction by the chair, contributors may present their research plans or findings in a lightning talk (10-15 minutes) followed by a quick q&a (5-10 minutes). Each session will be concluded by a joint discussion.

DigiMeet closes with a group debate on our visions and thoughts about the ideal platform of the future.

How to apply

We invite Doctoral and postdoctoral researchers to hand in a contribution for the sessions.

• Please submit your application with a short abstract (max. 200 words) until 31 July 2025 via https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=digimeet2025.

• Applicants will be notified concerning their submission by 14 September 2025 at the latest. Please note that all active contributors and regular participants will also need to register for the meeting by 12 October (link will follow).

If you have any questions, feel free to contact the organiser from your institute as indicated below or have a look at the respective websites.

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.