Approaching Social Media Governance

Abstract

In this working paper, we address the new forms of governance emerging within the technological and social spaces of Social Media. The overall aim of the underlying research project is to identify and examine the governance factors that regulate the user's behaviour in Social Media, to discover the governance structure formed by these factors, to analyse the normative intensity of the factors concerning the user's behaviour in Social Media, and, thereby, to uncover the interplay and interdependencies of the factors among each other. In doing so, the governance background of user behaviour in Social Media shall be revealed. As a first step, we approach this task with a pilot case study on the governance background of a certain user behaviour ("uploading a photo") in a certain Social Networking Service (Facebook) whose theoretical foundations, methods, and initial findings we present in this working paper.

Keywords: Social Media, Governance, Regulation, Code, Law, Contract, Social Norms, User Behaviour, Facebook