Australia's News Media Bargaining Code and the global turn towards platform regulation
Citation
Source Title
DOI
ISSN
Faculty
School
Collection
Abstract
Governments across the world are struggling to address the market dominance of technology companies through increased regulation. The Australian Federal government found itself leading the world in platform regulation when, in 2021, it enacted the Australian News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. The furore surrounding the introduction of the legislation, and Facebook's subsequent Australian ‘news ban’ exposed the limits of a regulatory model that has previously left the tech industry to moderate itself. In this paper, we argue the introduction of the Code is a leading example of a global trajectory towards regulatory change, which sees governments move from a reactive regulation model to specific interventions around the governance of digital media spaces. We discuss how best to measure the successes and failures around this more interventionist model through a case study of the implementation of the Code in Australia. More broadly we consider how global platforms have responded, and whether the reform is an effective regulatory model for other national governments to emulate.
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Bailo, Francesco; Meese, James; Hurcombe, Edward; Leaver, Tama ; Bruns, Axel; Angus, Daniel; Barnet, Belinda (2021)Responding rapidly to extraordinary developments in early 2021, this panel examines the background, development, implementation, and consequences of the latest Australian regulatory intervention in the engagement between ...
-
Leaver, Tama (2021)The first two months of 2021 saw Google and Facebook ‘go dark’ in terms of news content on the Australia versions of their platforms. In January, Google ran a so-called “experiment” which removed or demoted current news ...
-
Archer, C.; Wolf, Katharina (2017)Digital and social media tools are no longer new and have become standard components of the public relations toolkit. However, they have undoubtedly changed and shaped the practice of public relations (PR) over the past ...