Platform Governance and Human Rights

Digitalisation and 'platformisation' have disrupted many fields of economic, cultural and social life, and generated a range of concerns. This volume reflects on the role of human rights in legal and political debates around platform governance, questioning whether human rights provide an adequate framework to challenge the various harms stemming from the contemporary platform economy.It addresses contemporary challenges in the governance of digital platforms from a critical, multi-disciplinary perspective by focussing on issues such as the concentration of wealth and power; state and corporate surveillance; reproduction of colonial power asymmetries; erosion of labour rights; exacerbation of racial inequalities; and unsustainable levels of resource extraction and pollution. In academic literature, policy advocacy and activism, such topics are often framed as human rights issues, yet this framing is not neutral. The language and legal frameworks relied upon to make legal and political claims structure what kinds of issues are raised and how they are understood. Questions have also been raised about how far conventional, state-centric human rights law can mitigate harms within a governance context dominated by corporations. This book approaches this question from diverse disciplinary and geographic perspectives, addressing a variety of platform types—moving beyond questions about social media regulation and content moderation that have so far dominated academic debates, in order to more comprehensively appraise governance challenges.Essential reading for legal scholars, human rights practitioners, policy analysts and researchers interested in digital governance, technology regulation and the intersection of human rights with platform capitalism. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in Transnational Legal Theory.

Jelena Belic is an Assistant professor at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. Her current research focuses on the intersection of democratic theory and digital technologies as well as climate ethics. Matthew Canfield is Associate Professor of Law and Society & Law and Development in the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society at Leiden Law School. His research examines the rights of small-scale food producers, peasants, and Indigenous peoples in the context of digital transformation.Rachel Griffin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science & Security, based at Duisburg-Essen University. Her research focuses on EU regulation of online platforms and artificial intelligence.Henning Lahmann is Assistant Professor at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University. His research focuses on the intersection of international law and digital technologies, particularly the use of AI in public and national security, influence operations, and digital open-source evidence in international legal discourse.Barrie Sander is Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University – Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs where he conducts research and teaches in the areas of digital technology and international law, international human rights law, international criminal law, international legal theory, and public international law.