MAPS examines digital media platforms as crucial sites for social accountability processes and debates across global contexts. It conceptualizes media and digital platforms as fundamental actors and resources that influence relations and practices of social accountability—the principle that institutions should be answerable and responsible for their actions. The project uses digital methods combined with qualitative approaches and employs comparative designs to examine the changing dynamics, practices and discourses of social accountability. The project produces new knowledge of the ways in which social media platforms and media organizations intervene and influence accountability processes, both facilitating and threatening democratic participation. Further, it investigates how the accountability of platform companies is globally demanded and contested by governments and civil society actors, and how the platforms act to reclaim their legitimacy in response

2020

2025