Platform values in times of crises and war: A study on the duality between platform and public values during the Ukraine war
Summary
Today, the circulation of misinformation on platforms is threatening the public life of citizens, especially during times of crises and war. The framework of regulation by platforms provides insight into how platforms regulate content through their policies. This thesis examines the content policies of the platforms TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter during the Ukraine war through a textual analysis. It is argued that these policies reveal the dual nature of platform values, in which platforms operate as private actors in a public sphere. To illustrate, this study shows the difference in platform values across these platforms, such as safety, authenticity, and freedom of speech. However, these policies reveal that freedom of speech is used to serve the interests of Facebook and Twitter but clashes with the public value of responsibility and accountability. Besides that, the Ukraine war also constructed other public values such as trust and transparency, which interfere with the opaque and ambiguous policy enforcements of these platforms. As a result, it has been shown that during the war in Ukraine, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter shifted their self-regulatory systems into co-regulatory practices.