IGF 2025 Day 0 Event #117 Mapping Practices in Digital Platform Governance

During the International Conference on Digital Platform Governance, organized in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on 17-19 June 2024, which resulted in the establishment of the Global Forum of Networks (GFN), media and communications regulators recognized significant developments in the governance of digital platforms including a series of regional statutory frameworks, as well as global guiding principles such as the UNESCO Guidelines. However, regulatory authorities highlighted the need to support, gather and share existing and new research to identify good practices and risk mitigation strategies, monitor implementation, and report incidents, in all cases considering specific contexts and regions in which regulation is being implemented, bearing in mind the varying regulatory frameworks like the European Union, Europe and Latin America (LAC). The European Union has a mix of statutory and non-statutory mechanisms, based on a common set of regulations. The EFTA and EEA countries in Europe also have developed an interesting repertoire of good practices based on their regulations. The LAC countries often operate in a very fragmented regulatory environment with a need to institutionalize stable policies re. the digital platform governance. Based on these evolving frameworks, this study aims to identify and map best practices in digital platform governance, focusing in particular on media regulators’ non-statutory interventions that can be replicated in LAC. As a first step to strengthen the knowledge base to move in this direction a Study on Good Practices in Digital Platform Governance was launched in January 2025 to identify, in collaboration with relevant European and International media and communications regulators, existing non-statutory regulatory arrangements and practices by national regulators related to the governance of Internet platforms, which can be shared as good practices with regulators in the LAC region and increase their collective ability to hold digital platforms accountable and advance in an effective and multi-stakeholder regulation of the digital space in a human rights preserving manner. According to the Desk research and literature review, as well as the stakeholder engagement -16 media and communications regulators, the Study formulates examples of practices, focusing on the mechanisms and procedures that make the practice work, include concrete data on its results if available and a summary of the impact of the practice and classifies the examples in a structured way, providing a typology of interventions by regulators, indicating gender dimensions of practices when appropriate. In addition to the aforementioned, the Study formulates a limited number of recommendations addressed to regulators for the introduction and/or improvement of practices with Internet platforms. The panel will present and discuss the initial findings of this on-going exercise, including the points of view of regulators, academia and international organizations and will actively seek feedback from participants.

There would be series of 7or 8-minute inputs from the speakers followed by a Q&A with the onsite and online participants. The moderator will ensure that comments made in the chat are shared with the audience. If technically possible, participants on-line can be invited to ask questions/making comments with access to their mics and cameras. The panel will present and discuss the initial findings of an on-going exercise and will seek feedback from participants. For this, there will be time for discussion and the session will include a mentimeter, padlet or Kahoot solution to gather the answers of the participants.