Insights and Power: Internet Scientists meet Platform Decision-Makers

From 7.00-7.45 p.m. CET  Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz talks with Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, about the topic "Great Expectations: What Research Expects from Platforms and Platforms from Research".

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann 

This is the inaugural event of the distinguished Conversation Series "Insights and Power" convened by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz and Prof. Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann in the framework of the Private Ordering Observatory. 

The discussion will be streamed live on the TIDE Hamburg YouTube channel. Viewers can participate in the discussion via the YouTube chat and via Slido.



A recording of the event will be shown on TIDE's TV programme Thursday, 17 February  8:15 p.m. (CET). The event will be held in English.

Great Expectations: What Research Expects from Platforms and Platforms from Research

Content governance is a hard job. YouTube and other platforms are increasingly between a rock and a hard place:  they have to push back against state actors, de-platform coordinated inauthentic behavior, fight human rights abuses on their platforms all while being attractive communication spaces. Their interaction with governments is especially complex: Should they appease authoritative states and ensure at least a certain level of communicative freedoms for their users or take a principled stand? As the world evolves, the internal rules are also becoming substantially more complex. Deciding what should go and what can say is no easy task. So how does YouTube navigate the challenges of finding the right balance between stabilising revenue, coping with advertiser’s pressure, improving content quality and keeping creators happy? What role do emerging regulatory approaches from the European Union play in all these strategic decisions? And importantly: What part does science play in this complex constellation? What do platforms expect from science - and science from platforms?
 

Conversation Series:  "Insights and Power: Internet Scientists meet Decision-Makers"

A key challenge to good platform governance is the existence of knowledge asymmetries between governance actors. Platforms, scientists, civil society, regulators all know different things and have different perspectives on key elements like socio-technical platform architectures, incentive structures, norm production systems, algorithmic tools, and user behaviour. In light of the growing body of research on how platforms develop rules, and how public values should be integrated into private orders, three Kantian questions remain for platform governance research and practice:

• What can scientists know?
• What should platforms do?
• What can governments hope?

 
Insights and Power. Internet Scientists meet Decision-Makers is a series of workshops and public-facing events that put key internet scientists in conversation with platform leaders. Together they will enquire what action knowledge is essential for impact-oriented platform research, how knowledge transfer to platforms and regulators can happen and how cross-disciplinary, international platform research can succesfully be financed and conducted.

The Conversation Series is organized by the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) and the Global Network for Internet and Society Research Centres (NoC), uniting more than 100 research centers of excellence on internet and society. HBI has recently established a Private Ordering Observatory, a Digital Disinformation Hub, and a Social Media Observatory. HIIG has recently established the Platform Governance Archive. 
 

About Susan Wojcicki 

Susan Wojcicki is CEO of YouTube and oversees YouTube's content and business operations, engineering, and product development. Prior to joining YouTube in February 2014, Susan was Senior Vice President of Advertising & Commerce at Google, where she oversaw the design and engineering of AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick, and Google Analytics. She joined Google in 1999 as the company's first marketing manager and led the initial development of several key consumer products including Google Images and Google Books. In 2002, Susan began working on Google’s advertising products and over the next 12 years she led teams that helped define the vision and direction of Google’s monetization platforms. Susan graduated with honors from Harvard University, holds a master's in economics from UC Santa Cruz, and an MBA from UCLA.