Regulating Social Network Sites: Data Protection, Copyright and Power

Drawing on two qualitative case studies of copyright and data privacy regulation on the YouTube and Facebook social network sites (SNS) respectively, this book aims to shed new empirical light on the complex, dynamic and fragile power relations at play on these platforms when rights are at risk. It develops an innovative conceptual prism of power that brings together ideas about power from Michel Foucault and Actor-Network Theory (ANT-Foucauldian Power Lens) to critically analyse the research findings. Five arguments emerge. First, it is crucial to move away from the dominant regulatory lens, used in the literature, to an ANT-Foucauldian Power Lens to fully capture the complexity and dynamism of regulatory spaces on SNS when rights are at stake. Second, effects like regulation cannot be attributed to a single actor, regulatory modality or centralised structure. Rather, they are achieved locally as diverse human and non-human actors, are contingently associated for some time. They often mutate or fall apart due as local interdependencies rupture, change or wither. Third, plural and changeable power effects, situated within particular materially semiotic configurations, emanate from such orderings. Fourth, a relational perspective on law provides a more nuanced understanding of the roles of law in regulation and legal concepts like consent. Finally, it is possible to extrapolate from case studies’ findings to develop a small-scale theory about the diffuse and fragile power dynamics at play on SNS when rights are at stake and make recommendations on SNS regulation.