Posts by Collection
portfolio
press
Contact Tracing & Solutionism (Greek) Permalink
Published: May 16, 2020
A Greek-language article on contact tracing and technological solutionism.
Regulation of political speech online: the two contradictory models of Twitter and Facebook (French) Permalink
Published: July 07, 2020
A French-language article comparing Twitter’s and Facebook’s approaches to regulating political speech.
Digital Services Act, Brussels Effect and the Future of the Internet Permalink
Published: December 08, 2020
An article on the Digital Services Act, the Brussels Effect, and the future of internet governance.
Reporting on social networks, a means of moderation but also of censorship (French) Permalink
Published: December 10, 2020
A French-language article on user reporting as a mechanism of moderation and censorship.
Social media can be a threat to democracy (Greek)
Published: March 07, 2021
A Greek-language newspaper article on social media and democratic life.
Digital Activism: A Research into Facebook Comments (Greek)
Published: March 22, 2021
A Greek-language article using Facebook comments to examine digital activism.
Exploring Facebook’s Censorship (Greek)
Published: April 03, 2021
A Greek-language newspaper article examining Facebook’s content moderation practices.
Anti-vaxxers and sceptics on Greek-language social media: a form of far-right propaganda (Greek) Permalink
Published: October 17, 2021
A Greek-language article on anti-vaccination discourse and far-right propaganda on social media.
Content moderation and censorship on social media: The case of Koufontinas (Greek)
Published: November 16, 2021
A Greek-language article on content moderation, censorship, and the Koufontinas case.
The War in Ukraine Exposes Social Media as a Tool of the State Permalink
Published: March 12, 2022
Commentary with Nikos Smyrnaios on social media platforms and state power during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Journalism, Platforms, and the Challenges of Public Policy Permalink
Published: February 07, 2023
An article on Google and Meta’s journalism funding programmes and their public-policy implications.
Google and Meta have made 6,773 grants to news publishers: What are they up to? Permalink
Published: July 06, 2023
An interview about Google and Meta’s grant programmes for news publishers.
Η ελληνική δημοσιογραφία & η Ευρωπαϊκή Πράξη για την Ελευθερία των Μέσων Ενημέρωσης Permalink
Published: July 31, 2023
Greek-language commentary on the European Media Freedom Act and the political economy of news media in Greece.
Interview: Comment Google étend son soft power à Bruxelles Permalink
Published: October 13, 2023
An interview on Google’s soft power and political influence in Brussels.
Response to the Oversight Board’s Public Consultation on Greek 2023 elections campaign cases
Published: November 07, 2023
A response to the Oversight Board’s consultation on content moderation during Greece’s 2023 election campaign.
Interview on Transparency in Content Moderation Permalink
Published: November 07, 2023
An interview on the Digital Services Act and transparency in platform content moderation.
The Value of News in the Age of AI and Platform Regulation Permalink
Published: May 16, 2024
Commentary on journalism, artificial intelligence, and European platform policy.
Content Moderation and Platform Observability in the Digital Services Act Permalink
Published: May 29, 2024
Public analysis of content governance and regulatory oversight under the Digital Services Act.
Free Speech Was Never the Goal of Tech Billionaires. Power Was. Permalink
Published: January 22, 2025
Commentary on platform ownership, speech, and political power.
After the FAccT: Materiality and Militarisation Permalink
Published: July 18, 2025
A podcast conversation on the material infrastructures and militarisation of technology.
Το ChatGPT δεν έχει θέση στο εκπαιδευτικό μας σύστημα Permalink
Published: September 22, 2025
An opinion piece on generative AI and the place of ChatGPT in education.
publications
eSports and Digital Arenas
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Roinioti, E. (2021). eSports and Digital Arenas. In Digital Games: Philosophical, social and cultural investigations. Oasis.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Roinioti, E. (2021). eSports and Digital Arenas. In Digital Games: Philosophical, social and cultural investigations. Oasis.
The existential stakes of platform governance: a critical literature review
This study introduces a comprehensive overview of literature concerning the concepts of regulation and governance, and attempts to connect them to scholarly works that deal with the governance of and by social media platforms. The paper provides fundamental definitions of regulation and governance, along with a critique of polycentricity or multi-stakeholderism, in order to contextualise the discussion around platform governance and, subsequently, online content regulation. Moreover, where traditional governance literature conceptualised stakeholders as a triangle, this article proposes going beyond the triad of public, private and non-governmental actors, to account for previously invisible stakeholder clusters, like citizens and news media organisations. This paper also contends that, while platform governance is an important field of study and practice, the way it has been structured and investigated so far, is posing an existential risk to the broader internet governance structure, primarily, because of the danger of conflating the internet with platforms. As a result, there exists a timely need to reimagine the way in which we understand and study phenomena related to platform governance by adjusting our conceptual and analytical heuristics. So, this article wishes to expand the theorisation of this field in order to better engage with complicated platform governance issues, like the development of regulatory frameworks concerning online content regulation.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C. (2021). "The existential stakes of platform governance: a critical literature review" Open Research Europe. 1(1). https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/1-31/v2
Exploring Video-game Production’s Contingency on Live-Streaming Platforms: The Case of Twitch
This article studies the cultural contingency of video-game production on Amazon’s live-streaming platform, Twitch. It looks at this phenomenon from a political-economic perspective to unearth Twitch’s platformisation strategy to better understand what it means for the video-game industry. Platformisation signifies the infrastructural embeddedness of platforms, supported by a business strategy of expanding beyond their services’ boundaries to standardise appropriation, processing and exploitation of data, resulting in a dependency of content creators on digital platforms. Subsequently, we wish to grasp what dependencies are created and how it is made possible. We argue that Twitch is transforming into an integral part of the video-game production cycle by expanding its services to every stage of a game’s life cycle. Consequently, game developers are incentivised to apply these features in their game design, thus creating an economic feedback loop that a) aspires to increase user acquisition, retention and revenue, b) locks-in game developers and viewers alike, and c) “platformises” the gaming experience.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Roinioti, E. (2021). EXPLORING VIDEO-GAME PRODUCTION'S CONTINGENCY ON LIVE-STREAMING PLATFORMS: THE CASE OF TWITCH. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12223 https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/12223
Covidcheck: assessing the implementation of EU code of practice on disinformation in relation to Covid-19
CovidCheck is the third monitoring report that has been commissioned by the BAI and prepared by the DCU Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society (FuJo), on the implementation of the Code in Ireland. Each of these reports has been part of a larger monitoring process undertaken by European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA), at the request of the EU Commission. As with the first two reports, the authors of CovidCheck conclude that, while the Code is a significant first step in fighting disinformation, significant weaknesses in terms of structure, content and enforcement remain to be addressed. This conclusion also underpins the guidance issued by the EU Commission in May 2021 on how the Code should be strengthened by the signatories to become a more effective tool in fighting disinformation.
Recommended citation: Eileen, C., Kirsty, P., Feenane, T., Papaevangelou, C., Conroy, A., & Suiter, J. (2021). CovidCheck: Assessing the Implementation of EU Code of Practice on Disinformation in Relation to Covid-19. DCU Institute of Future Media, Democracy and Society & Broadcasting Authority of Ireland . https://fujomedia.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Code2021_COVIDCheck.pdf http://doras.dcu.ie/26472/1/20210914_Final-Report_DCU.pdf
The Case of a Facebook Content Moderation Debacle in Greece
This chapter first discusses how Facebook’s content moderation process works, along with Facebook’s policies on Dangerous Individuals and Organizations, which were allegedly violated in the case we examine in this chapter; second, we briefly describe necessary contextual information regarding 17 November and Koufontinas’s actions, as well as what sparked the controversy presented here. Our case study consists of several instances of content removals and account restrictions of Greek journalists that were covering protests and were participating in the public debate around Koufontinas's hunger strike. All examined content moderation decisions took place on Facebook during the same period, mostly between February and April 2021. Last, we conduct a case-by-case analysis to deduce if the content had indeed violated any platform policy to extrapolate what may have happened in this case study and what socio-political stakes exist with the current content governance. Consequently, we argue that this chapter further demonstrates platforms’ preference to proactively err on the side of more content removal rather than letting politically controversial content on its services; this also further strengthens the argument that platforms are not neutral intermediaries and are increasingly taking editorial decisions.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., Smyrnaios, N. (2022). The Case of a Facebook Content Moderation Debacle in Greece. In: Iordanidou, S., Jebril, N., Takas, E. (eds) Journalism and Digital Content in Emerging Media Markets . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04552-3_2 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-04552-3_2
The role of citizens in platform governance: A case study on public consultations regarding online content regulation in the European Union
This article proposes to start considering the role that citizens play in platform governance as a way of critically reflecting on issues of inclusivity in and effectiveness of current decision-making processes. This article attempts to apply the above suggestion by studying citizens’ discourse in recent European efforts to regulate online content. It does so by employing an experimental methodology, namely, a computationally assisted Critical Discourse Analysis on textual data derived from citizens’ contributions to the European Commission’s Public Consultations on three crucial regulatory texts: the Code of Practice on Disinformation, the Recommendation on Tackling Illegal Content Online and the Digital Services Act. The present analysis suggests that the EU’s strategy to advance participatory governance through public consultations seems to ignore citizens’ qualitative input and, thus, the feedback received can be severely limited. Concluding, the article maintains that scholarship should adopt a more encompassing scope when studying platform governance, especially concerning citizen and user participation, beyond the traditional frame of participation through civil society representation, while critically scrutinising existing ostensibly participatory structures.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C. (2023). The role of citizens in platform governance: A case study on public consultations regarding online content regulation in the European Union. Global Media and China, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364221150142 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/20594364221150142
Funding Intermediaries: Google and Facebook’s Strategy to Capture Journalism
With more and more governments around the world considering or having already passed laws aiming to regulate the relationship between news publishers and online platforms, primarily, by ensuring a form of remuneration of the former from the latter, we ought to understand the current situation. This article seeks to inquire who platforms fund, how and why. We created a dataset of organizations that have participated in Google News Initiative or Facebook Journalism Project by gathering data from communicative and informative material found on the websites of platforms and beneficiaries. Through our analysis, we identified stakeholders that play a crucial role in the realization of platforms’ funding programs, whom we call funding intermediaries. Therefore, this article contends that the platforms’ strategic decision has not only been to distribute money through a complicated governance structure, but also to target parts of the industry that have been hurt by an ongoing crisis, aggravated by the platforms’ dominance of the advertising industry. However, funding journalism ensures neither media capture, i.e., positive or lack of critical coverage, nor regulatory capture, i.e., avoiding or adjusting regulation. As a result, we ultimately propose to approach capture as a political-economic concept to study platform power.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C. (2023). Funding Intermediaries: Google and Facebook's Strategy to Capture Journalism. Digital Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2155206 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2022.2155206
Google News Initiative’s Influence on Technological Media Innovation in Africa and the Middle East
The Google News Initiative (GNI) aims to collaborate closely with the news industry and financially support the creation of quality journalism in the digital age. It also aims to bring technological advancements and innovation into newsrooms’ operations. Drawing on journalism innovation and responsible innovation theories, this study examines GNI beneficiaries in Africa and the Middle East. To address this, we analysed GNI projects’ descriptions combined with thirteen (n = 13) in‐depth interviews with leading actors and beneficiary news organisations to answer two main questions: (a) What are the main characteristics of the technological innovations proposed by GNI Innovation Challenge grantees in Africa and the Middle East? and (b) How are these news media organisations becoming increasingly dependent on these platforms’ technological and financial aspects? Anchored in journalism innovation, responsible innovation, and platformisation the‐ ories, our findings show that funded organisations heavily depend on Google’s technological and financial infrastructure to innovate. Furthermore, we note that some projects do not offer a clear path for sustainability in the future. We further argue that this initiative builds an infrastructure of power and dependency that poses risks to responsible innovation in journalism. Our study contributes to extant scholarship on digital platforms and their role in the infrastructure of news organisations, creating power asymmetries between those who serve as the backbone for data flows and technological processes and those dependent on these institutions.
Recommended citation: de-Lima-Santos, M.F,, Munoriyarwa, A., Elega, A., & Papaevangelou, C. (2023). Google News Initiative’s Influence on Technological Media Innovation in Africa and the Middle East. Media and Communication, 11(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v11i2.6400 https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/6400/
Regulating dependency: the political stakes of online platforms’ deals with French publishers
At a time when the news industry struggles to cope with the dominance of the advertising market by large platforms, along with recent crises like the Covid-19 pandemic, commercial deals and regulatory initiatives are becoming increasingly common. While there is ample space for regulatory interventions seeking to level the playing field between news industry’s stakeholders and platforms, we are concerned these might further cement dependency of the former on the latter through co-regulatory frameworks that epitomize the capture of vital infrastructures by platforms. This article examines the three-year negotiation of French news publishers with Google and Meta, which concluded with four framework agreements being signed. For our analysis, we first look at the historical trajectory of how these deals were made possible using secondary sources, like leaks, press releases and the French Competition Authority’s rulings, and we then discuss their details and implications. We trace Google’s attempt to capture news media in France and discuss the asymmetrical power it has muscled over the news industry, and how the subsequent deals with Meta were affected. Finally, our case study shows that these frameworks are not sufficient to tackle systemic imbalances — even if they mean well - because they fail to challenge the concentration of power by a handful of oligopolistic private companies and, thus, effectively leave it up to them and the free market’s idiosyncrasies to decide how they are implemented.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Smyrnaios, N. (2023). Regulating dependency: The political stakes of online platforms’ deals with French publishers. Anàlisi, 68, 117–134. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/analisi.3546 https://analisi.cat/article/view/v68-papaevangelou-smyrnaios
The relationship between journalists and platforms in European online content governance: A case study on a non-interference principle
Amongst the many debates within the sphere of platform governance, one is particularly telling of the political stakes at play: how should journalistic content be treated in relation to content regulation? There is, perhaps, no better case in which this is playing out than the upcoming Digital Services Act proposed by the European Commission. Specifically, on the one hand, news media organisations have been lobbying for a “non-interference principle” that would prevent platforms from moderating editorial content that has been published by credible news sources, while on the other hand, officials, platforms, and civil society experts have been arguing against such a measure, primarily, due to the risk of creating an exploitable loophole for bad actors. This paper aims to unravel the contentious negotiations behind this debate. This article draws from more than a dozen of in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders. Finally, this paper aspires to help inform the multifaceted conundrum of who governs the contemporary digital public sphere, to further expose the risks of entrusting this task solely to social media platforms and, last, to contribute to a much-needed theorisation and reconsideration of news media’s role in platform governance.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C. (2023). ‘The non-interference principle’: Debating online platforms’ treatment of editorial content in the European Union’s Digital Services Act. European Journal of Communication, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231231189036 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02673231231189036
What can we learn from the agreements between platforms and news publishers in France?
An analysis of agreements between digital platforms and news publishers in France and their implications for media innovation and funding. Presented at the ICA 2023 Post Conference: Novel Directions in Media Innovation and Funding in Toronto, Canada.
A cure worse than the disease? The controversy on Twitter around a fake COVID-19 treatment from France
This article analyses the actors and discourses involved in the controversy surrounding Didier Raoult’s hydroxychloroquine-based COVID-19 treatment proposal. Combining network and lexicometric analysis across 1.2 million tweets, it connects peaks in online attention to major media events and identifies political, media, conspiratorial, and anti-establishment clusters within the debate.
Recommended citation: Smyrnaios, N., Tsimpoukis, P., & Papaevangelou, C. (2024). A cure worse than the disease? The controversy on Twitter around a fake COVID-19 treatment from France. The Greek Review of Social Research, 163, 11–36. https://doi.org/10.12681/grsr.38490. https://doi.org/10.12681/grsr.38490
Anti-vaccination and COVID-19 scepticism on Greek-speaking social media: A form of far-right propaganda
This study delves into the COVID-19 vaccination debate on Greek-speaking social media platforms, set against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic. It focuses on how digital spaces have become arenas for counter-hegemonic discourses. The research employs quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze content from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, identifying user groups engaged in anti-vaccination or vaccine-sceptic rhetoric. While direct socio-economic data on the participants is not accessible, the analysis of discourse offers insights into the underlying class structures influencing vaccination opinions. Additionally, the study examines unique ideological blends in Greek society, encompassing far-right nationalism, religiosity, and anti-scientism. These elements fuel vaccine hesitancy and are exploited by various actors for political, ideological, or financial gains. The research explores how social class affiliations and ideological factors shape public attitudes towards vaccination in Greece, contributing to the broader understanding of how digital public spheres reflect and mediate socio-political tensions in times of crisis.
Recommended citation: Smyrnaios, N., Papaevangelou, C., & Tsimpoukis, P. (2024). Anti-vaccination and COVID-19 scepticism on Greek-speaking social media: A form of far-right propaganda. In Y. Mylonas & E. Psyllakou (Eds.), Class, Culture, and the Media in Greece. Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55127-7_9 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55127-7_9
Council of Europe Report: Generative AI and democracy - Risks and opportunities
Upon invitation by the Council of Europe, the AI, Media and Democracy Lab has drafted a comprehensive advisory report on the advantages and risks that the use of Generative AI (GenAI) can bring to media, democratic and electoral processes. Considering the broader technological context in which it operates, dynamics around power, access, and resource use, as well as governance, this report defines key priorities in managing the role that GenAI plays in our society. The report is grounded in the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law.
State, platform capitalism and infrastructural power: Microsoft’s data centres in Greece 2.0
This article examines the under-explored role of the state in enabling platform capitalism by analysing Microsoft’s infrastructural investment in Greece, as part of the country’s post-pandemic ‘National Recovery and Resilience Plan: Greece 2.0’. While much of the critical literature emphasises platform companies’ control over infrastructure and data, we argue that state facilitation is a crucial component of platform capital accumulation. Through a case study of Microsoft’s construction of three data centres in the region of Attica, we show how the Greek state actively facilitated this investment, framing it as a driver of modernisation and economic recovery. We base our study on a comprehensive document analysis of official communications, regulatory frameworks and legal documents. This involvement exemplifies how semi-peripheral states like Greece, shaped by neoliberal restructuring and economic dependence, contribute to consolidating the power of tech corporations, often at the expense of local communities and the environment. By integrating theories of state capitalism and techno-colonialism with critical platform scholarship, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of the political economy of platform capitalism, revealing the symbiotic yet exploitative nature of state-tech partnerships and urging a re-centring of the state’s role in facilitating corporate dominance over digital infrastructures and global platform capitalism.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Siapera, E. (2025). State, platform capitalism and infrastructural power: Microsoft's data centres in Greece 2.0. Platforms & Society, 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251323325. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251323325
Institutionalising platform dependence: The paradox of the European Media Freedom Act
The growing reliance of journalism on platforms has profoundly affected the political economy of journalism. In response to growing concerns over platforms’ discretionary power over journalism, the EU introduced a legally-binding media privilege’ with its European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), seeking to protect journalistic content from platforms’ unjust content moderation mechanisms. While the EMFA represents a significant affirmation of journalism’s normative value and the need for elevated legal protections, this article identifies a fundamental paradox at the core of the regulation: by entrusting critical procedural obligations to platform companies, the EMFA risks entrenching rather than mitigating platforms’ discretionary power over journalism. Using a doctrinal legal analysis of the EMFA, supplemented by a critical evaluation of its platform-press implications and the broader sociopolitical context, we foreground how the EMFA’s procedural reliance on platforms stop it short from realising its normative ambitions regarding journalism’s democratic value. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, we identify two structural reasons for this paradox: the EU’s consistent underestimation of platform firms’ material interests and its misguided faith in procedural fairness and multistakeholder governance models. Ultimately, we contend that structural and not procedural changes are required to effectively protect journalism’s democratic value.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & van Drunen, M. Institutionalising platform dependence: The paradox of the European Media Freedom Act. Under review. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/rbwpx_v1
Trading nuance for scale? Platform observability and content governance under the DSA
The Digital Services Act (DSA) marks a paradigmatic shift in platform governance, introducing mechanisms like the Statement of Reasons (SoRs) database to foster transparency and observability of platforms’ content moderation practices. This study investigates the DSA Transparency Database as a regulatory mechanism for enabling observability, focusing on the automation and territorial application of content moderation across the EU/EEA. By analysing 439 million SoRs from eight Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), we find that the vast majority of content moderation decisions are enforced automatically and uniformly across the EU/EEA. We also identify significant discrepancies in content moderation strategies across VLOPs, with TikTok, YouTube and X exhibiting the most distinct practices, which are further analysed in the paper. Our findings reveal a strong correlation between automation and the speed of content moderation, automation and the territorial scope of decisions. We also highlight several limitations of the database, notably the lack of language-specific data and inconsistencies in how SoRs are reported by VLOPs. We conclude that despite such shortcomings, the DSA and its Transparency Database may enable a wider constellation of stakeholders to participate in platform governance, paving the way for more meaningful platform observability.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Votta, F. (2025). Trading nuance for scale? Platform observability and content governance under the DSA. Internet Policy Review. https://doi.org/10.14763/2025.3.2037
The politics of data colonialism: Amazon and Microsoft’s entanglement in Greece 2.0
Forthcoming in the Handbook of Technology, Media, & Democracy.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Siapera, E. (in press). The politics of data colonialism: Amazon and Microsoft's entanglement in Greece 2.0. In P. Napoli, R. Caplan, & K. Rogerson (Eds.), Handbook of Technology, Media, & Democracy. De Gruyter Brill.
FORSEE Horizon Deliverable: Media Discourse Analysis
This report analyses how daily newspapers in France, Germany, Ireland, and Spain frame the success and failure of artificial intelligence, drawing on 31,294 articles published between 2022 and 2025. It identifies patterns, contradictions, and tensions in these framings and examines which actors dominate public discourse on AI and which remain marginalised or absent.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., Loubère, L., Smyrnaios, N., & Ratinaud, P. (2026). D4.2 Media Discourse Analysis. FORSEE. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18503359 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18503359
FORSEE Horizon Deliverable: Social Media Analysis of AI Applications
This report analyses how social media users in France, Spain, Germany, and Ireland frame the success and failure of artificial intelligence. Drawing on user-generated content from Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, it identifies core societal tensions, controversies, and patterns of conditional acceptance of AI, primarily generative AI.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., Loubère, L., Smyrnaios, N., & Ratinaud, P. (2026). D4.1 Social Media Analysis of AI Applications. FORSEE. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18503032 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18503032
Shared responsibility, unequal power: Mapping the limitations of multi-stakeholderism in the EU’s digital governance
With the adoption of the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, Artificial Intelligence Act and European Media Freedom Act, the European Union has established an ambitious regulatory framework to oversee digital platforms and AI systems. This article maps the governance stakeholders involved in the operationalization of these four instruments and examines their distribution of powers and responsibilities. Building on existing typologies of platform governance and regulatory space theory, we introduce an analytical framework that foregrounds three structural elements – competencies, capacities and connectedness – alongside eight regulatory functions, ranging from agenda-setting to enforcement and discourse shaping. We then operationalize this framework in the context of the standardization ecosystem, highlighting the growing prominence of standardization bodies as central actors in multi-stakeholderism. Our analysis shows that, despite the promises of multi-stakeholderism for more democratic and cooperative governance configurations, in practice this approach often disregards material power asymmetries. This reality privileges technocratic expertise and industry stakeholders over public-interest actors, ultimately hindering a more equitable and democratic governance paradigm. We conclude by arguing that pursuing strategic autonomy, as the European Union boasts, requires reducing the regulatory power of private actors and strengthening capacities of actors normatively and materially grounded in the public interest.
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., Kutscher, S., Helberger, N., van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2026). Shared responsibility, unequal power: Mapping the limitations of multi-stakeholderism in the EU's digital governance. Journal of Digital Media & Policy. https://doi.org/10.1386/jdmp_00201_1 https://doi.org/10.1386/jdmp_00201_1
The AI Gigafactory or: How the EU learned to stop worrying and love the hyperscaler
At the 2025 Paris AI Action Summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the construction of five AI Gigafactories across the EU under the InvestAI framework and tied to a EUR 20 billion public-private funding scheme. These facilities are intended to train industrial-scale frontier AI models…
Recommended citation: Papaevangelou, C., & Vogiatzoglou, P. (2026, June 11). The AI Gigafactory or: How the EU learned to stop worrying and love the hyperscaler. Internet Policy Review. https://policyreview.info/articles/news/ai-gigafactory/2101
talks
(AoIR2021) Association of Internet Researchers 2020
Published: January 11, 2020
Participated in the AoIR 2020 Doctoral Colloquium.
Politics of Pandemics, Platforms and Journalism
Published: June 23, 2020
Participated in the JOLT Conference of July 2020
JOLT London Conference
Published: October 16, 2020
Participated in the JOLT Conference of November 2020
(AoIR2022) The Role of Citizens in Platform Governance: A Case Study of Public Consultations on European Online Content Regulation
Published: January 11, 2021
Participated in the AoIR2022 workshop on Radical Approaches to Platform Governance. You can access the presentation here.
JOLT Toulouse Conference
Published: May 31, 2021
Organised and participated in the June 2021 JOLT conference in Toulouse.
COVIDCHECK: Assessing the Implementation of EU Code of Practice on Disinformation in Relation to COVID-19
Published: June 16, 2021
COVID-19 Disinformation Research: CovidCheck
Published: June 25, 2021
Presented the COVIDCheck report to FuJo’s Advisory Board.
Platform Governance: A Critical Literature Review
Published: September 09, 2021
Presented my peer-reviewed article at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research. View the presentation.
The Political Stakes of Online Platforms’ Deals with French Publishers
Published: September 17, 2021
Participated in the JOLT September 2021 Conference in Pamplona. Presented our work with Nikos Smyrnaios on “The political stakes of online platforms’ deals with French publishers “. You can access the presentation here
Exploring Video-Game Production’s Contingency on Live-Streaming Platforms: The Case of Twitch
Published: October 13, 2021
Participated in the AoIR2021
Social media as a mirror for the 21st century society. A case study based on Facebook as a research tool (Greek)
Published: November 16, 2021
JOLT Amsterdam Conference
Published: April 01, 2022
Participated in the JOLT April 2022 Conference in Amsterdam
(ICA2022) The Role of Citizens in Platform Governance: A Case Study of Public Consultations on European Online Content Regulation
Published: May 25, 2022
Participated in the ICA 2022 preconference on platform governance and digital sovereignty. View the presentation.
(ICA2022) Funding Intermediaries: How Google and Facebook Capture Journalism
Published: May 26, 2022
Participated in the ICA 2022 Conference in Paris (Preconference: From International News Flows to Platformization of Journalism: Global News Diversity in Perspective)
(ICA2022) How Google and Facebook Capture Journalism
Published: May 28, 2022
Participated in the ICA 2022 Conference in Paris (Panel on Media Capture). You can access the presentation here
The Relationship Between Journalists and Platforms in European Online Content Governance
Published: October 21, 2022
Participated in a symposium of the European Journal of Communication for an upcoming Special Issue on the Platformisation of the Public Sphere. You can access the presentation here and you can read the preprint here.
Platform Power and the Geopolitical Order: Greece 2.0 as a Tech Colony
Published: March 03, 2023
Presented a work-in-progress with Eugenia Siapera on a case study demonstrating how Big Tech is colonising a periphery country like Greece by homing in on specific investments announced by the company. You can access the presentation here and read here more about the conference.
Intervention at Nikos Poulantzas Institute
Published: March 03, 2023
Spoke to the emerging regulatory framework of the EU regarding online platforms
Platform Power and the Geopolitical Order: Greece 2.0 as a Tech Colony
Published: April 23, 2023
Presented a work-in-progress with Eugenia Siapera on a case study demonstrating how Big Tech is colonising a periphery country like Greece by homing in on specific investments announced by the company. You can access the presentation here.
Google News Initiative in Africa and the Middle East: The Influence of Platforms on Media Innovation
Published: May 30, 2023
Presented our work on GNI and its implications for media innovation in Africa and the Middle East. You can access our presentation here.
Funding favourable coverage? Big tech’s influence over independent journalism
Published: September 11, 2023
Participated in a panel on Big Tech’s influence over independent journalism with Marius Dragomir, Courtney Radsch and Mark Dempsey. Organised by Media Freedom Rapid Response.
Why complementors need our attention?!
Published: November 22, 2023
Presented a work-in-progress project, a collaboration with Thomas Poell, Natali Helberger and David Nieborg on reconceptualising complementors. You can find a transcript of my presentation here.
The Evolving Saga of Journalism and Digital Platforms
Published: November 25, 2023
Gave a keynote at the annual Undergraduate Policy Competition of Canada. You can access the presentation here and a transcript of my keynote here.
What observability have you given us? Harmonisation and automation in content moderation under the DSA
Published: February 15, 2024
Presented our work with Fabio Votta on analysing the Statement of the Reasons of the DSA’s database in the DSA Observatory’s “EU Platform Regulation”. You can access our presentation here.
AlgoSoc International Conference 2025
Published: April 10, 2025
Presentation at the AlgoSoc International Conference 2025.
The hidden costs of digital sovereignty: Greece’s data infrastructures as a site of political contestation
Published: June 23, 2025
Co-organised panel on Greece’s data infrastructures, digital sovereignty, and political contestation.
Association of Internet Researchers 2025
Published: October 15, 2025
Presentation at the 2025 Association of Internet Researchers conference.
Governing Artificial Intelligence in the Anthropocene
Published: March 18, 2026
Workshop presentation on governing artificial intelligence in the Anthropocene.
4th Data Justice Lab Conference
Published: June 01, 2026
Presentation at the 4th Data Justice Lab Conference.
teaching
The Political Economy of Live-Streaming Video-Games
Gave a lecture to BA media studies students on the political economy of Twitch.
Digital Methods
Gave a lecture to secondary-school students on social media and politics.
Digital Methods
Gave a lecture to LERASS PhD students on digital methods for the social sciences.
Digital Methods
Gave a lecture to MSc psychology students on digital methods for the social sciences.
Platforms and the News Industry
Gave a guest lecture on the relationship between platforms and journalism to SciencesPo undergraduate students.
Critical Perspectives on AI Governance
Co-coordinator responsible for classes on the environmental impact of artificial intelligence, the political economy of AI value chains, and AI and the military-industrial complex.
Digital Methods for Social Media Analysis
Co-responsible for the Digital Methods course, teaching methods for social media analysis to MSc Cyberpsychology students.