Published: Fall 2022    |    By: Ulrike Klinger |   Volume 70, No. 5

Synopsis

Decades after the rise of online platforms, democracies still have not found answers for how to address the power asymmetries these global platforms create and the detrimental collateral effects their business models have on democracies and democratic processes. This paper identifies the myriad of threats that such platforms pose currently, and recommends policies democracies can undertake to address these harms.

Ulrike Klinger joined ENS in October 2020 and holds the Chair for Digital Democracy. She is also an Associated Researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin. Before joining ENS, she was a Professor for Digital Communication at Freie Universität Berlin and head of the research group on “News, campaigns and the rationality of public discourse” at the Weizenbaum Institute. Her research focuses on political and digital communication – the transformation of digital public spheres, the role of digital media in election campaigns, and the impact of technologies on public communication. After finishing her dissertation, she has worked as a Post-Doc at IKMZ – Department for Mass Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich in Switzerland (2009-2018), as an interim professor for digital communication at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen (2016-2017) and was visiting scholar at various institutes, e.g. the Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California at Santa Barbara or the HIIG Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.