Book Review

Global Media and China

2023, Vol. 0(0) 1–4
Where Will Global Digital Platforms © The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/20594364231183146
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Regulating Platforms

Terry Flew, Regulating Platforms, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2021, xix+310 pp., ISBN: 9781509537075

Where will global digital platforms go?

The focus on the relationship between the internet and regulation is a commonplace topic, as well as
a novel topic. What are the latest problems and the history of the digital platforms? Why did internet
governance and regulation suddenly become a top priority on the global agenda a few years ago?
What roles do jargon, fundamental ideas, and fresh arguments play in this discussion? The correct
responses to these queries may include at least two parts: what it is and why it is. Realizing the
current practical concerns that need to be addressed is one thing. The other is returning to the
normative focus on the reasons why changes were made to the regulation of online environments,
with the latter indirectly promoting the context that follows to learn how it works.
When comparing Terry Flew’s Regulating Platforms to previous attempts to map the inter-
disciplinary subject of internet governance and regulation, there is little overlap in the argument
between digital platforms and regulation or governments. For example, past works essentially
provide an overview of the various issues and challenges related to past ongoing internet gov-
ernance and regulation, including some 21st century topics such as cyber security, network
neutrality, data safety, social-media feeds, and personal privacy, as well as relatively ancient topics
such as freedom of expression, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), and so on. They also look
at the numerous institutions and organizations that shape internet governance, such as national
governments, international organizations, and civil society organizations.
In Flew’s text, new situations arose with the development of the Internet in recent years, and he
provides a historical perspective across time and space dimensions on the flourishing platforms and
the ongoing “platformization,” the ever-present media regulation, and the relationship for each other
in the new social context and media landscape, despite the fact that this is a common way of thinking
about introducing something new.
The fundamental and final goal of Flew’s essay is to fill this gap appropriately, with the definition
and delineation of online platformization as the integral paradigm to advocate for stronger internet
regulation, which is one of this text’s arguments. We are aware that the concept of platforms and

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2 Global Media and China 0(0)

their role in the economy and society has received considerable attention in academic and policy
circles, as well as in popular media. Platformization refers to the increasing presence of platforms in
the digital economy, as well as how platforms shape economic and social relationships. As states
and governments throughout the world have highlighted, this is the process by which online
exchanges and engagements are increasingly made to take place on a relatively small number of
digital platforms but with great influence in terms of social, economic, political, and cultural
ramifications.
Flew divides the historical evolution of the internet into three stages after the preface and before
introducing and delineating the critical perspective, which is centered on the core concept of
platform and platformization of communication media, as mentioned above. The three historical
stages do not have clear definitions but rather move across time implications.
The primary stage known as the “libertarian internet” or “the open internet,” as Flew describes in
the first chapter, can be roughly dated from 1990 to 2005, and is framed by Californian ideology
(take free minds and free markets as the slogan), deregulated economics, counter-cultural idealism,
openness as public policy, and so on, when it appears that the big tech of digital abundance is
ushering in a new era of proprietary systems and intellectual property. Indeed, the ideational
structure that had long rejected external control, believing that the internet should be administered
by netizens and civil society organizations, is no longer in place. In this chapter, Flew introduces a
new paradigm that blends the Three Is with ideas, interests, and governing structures to help readers
better understand the ever-changing online world of digital technologies and digital platforms.
With the rise of web 2.0, which is seen as “the network as platform,” the internet entered the
second phase of evolution from 2006 to the present known as “platformized internet,” which is
critically labeled as “digital capitalism, platform capitalism, and surveillance capitalism” (p.40),
calling for greater internet regulation. In this chapter, Flew attempts to define what a platform is,
describe the emergence of digital platforms on the web 2.0, massive volumes of data, and social
media, and then distinguish the many types based on taxonomies study.
In the author’s words, by the late 2010s, the relationship between the internet and regulation had
altered dramatically, with a greater emphasis on who managed platformized internet development
and in whose interests, rather than whether cyberspace could be governed at all. The third stage,
which Flew refers to as the “regulated internet,” emphasizes the close relationship between platform
regulation and platform governance, analogous to the two sides of a coin, one of which is applied by
external agents and the other via inherent features from themselves. Flew, on the other hand, is vital
to him, despite the fact that he inserted the term “regulation” into the title.
According to Techlash, the “issues of concern” chapter identifies seven profound and hotly
debated questions and themes in today’s digital platforms, such as privacy and security, data rights
and protections (most on datafication and dataveillance), governance of algorithms and algorithmic
selection, disinformation and fake news, hate speech and online abuse, impact on other media and
the creative industries, and the rise of information monopolies et al.
Is mass media coming to an end? The affirmative response to this question appears to have
become the consensus, which is tensely tied to media policy and academic agenda. While digital
media platforms are more basically interactive than traditional mass media, there is content re-
dundancy as a result. I believe that mass media is a relative term in nature and that it may exist in
different forms that are “less enormous and less centralised” (McQuail & Deuze, 2020, p.53), as
digital platforms have given mass communication a new face. After all, the platform world has
already arrived at a macro level.
Overall, whether it is about the affordances of digital communication or the power and political
economy of digital platforms, Flew’s text brings up enough issues to make us reconsider the
Book Review 3

relationship of digital platforms and the platformized internet with communication policy, as well as
regulation and governance. In the following chapter, Flew argues that there are clearly distinct
definitions of law, policy, and regulation, which are three frames of communications policy, and then
he elaborates on the definitional distinction between media policy and communication policy, which
is critical for understanding the nature of the problem and solving it.
In light of the new three Is paradigm (including ideas, interests, and institutions, as mentioned
above), he lays out the three Is of communication policy in the age of the Internet, both conceptually
and practically, concluding that one of the platform companies’ greatest ideological achievements
was to recognize that they were not media companies.
As we learned in the preceding section about the strong relationship between platform regulation
and governance, the book underlines that a platform without regulation is simply impossible, and
regulation is as central to platforms as content and infrastructure are to the internet. Following the
fundamental discussions concerning digital platforms and communication policy, the following text
explores the shifting dynamics of digital platform regulation in the context of the “governance
revolution” in order to reflect on the regulatory and policy future for digital platforms. Flew points
out that the governance framework is at least threefold: self-governance, external governance, and
co-governance, using the concept of “platform governance triangle” (Gorwa, 2019), which appears
to present the relationship between digital platform companies, governments, and civil society
organizations. In the most recent publication (Flew & Su, 2023), he also stated that, given the power
of agenda setting by various actors, platform governance must be tackled with greater transparency.
Returning to the text, he offered six regulatory cases from the late 2010s and early 2020s to
demonstrate that “the state is now necessary to assert its authority” (p.166). After debating the
benefits and downsides of the most influential liberal institutionalist framework, the author uses the
Chinese Internet as case studies in the sixth chapter to counterpoint and indicate that tech na-
tionalism is likely to be the future of global internet governance. Nevertheless, when he hyperlinks
Chinese cyberspace governance with technical imperialism and even cyber dictatorship, he
demonstrates an insufficient comprehension of Chinese network cultural security theory more or
less. “Cyber cultural security” is a cyber security concept with Chinese elements in detail. The study
of “cyber security” is more significant in the Western social media context, but the study of Chinese
cyber cultural security focuses more on cultural security challenges in cyberspace, such as ideology,
traditional culture, and ethical order.
In certain ways, the book has a complete logical structure and extensive volume, which provides
readers with tremendous opportunities for rational imagination and pragmatic creativity. In the
penultimate chapter, for example, the author proposes various options to regulating the power of
digital platforms based on the reality of existing problems. On the empirical level, the author
methodically explains the difference and shift between platform regulation and governance. When
the author does his best to engage with a wide range of diverse debates in the text, I see an image of a
well-informed, diligent, and, most importantly, enthusiastic scholar in front of me.

Qin Song 
Communication University of China, China

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or pub-
lication of this article: This was supported by The Asia Media Research Centre, Communication University of
China (AMRC2021-5).
4 Global Media and China 0(0)

ORCID iD
Qin Song  https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4246-9519

References
Gorwa, R. (2019). The platform governance triangle: Conceptualising the informal regulation of online
content. Internet Policy Review, 8(2), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/tgnrj
McQuail, D., & Deuze, M. (2020). McQuail’s media and mass communication theory (7th ed.). Sage.
Flew, T., & Su, C. (2023). Introduction: Sovereignty and the Return of Governance for Digital Platforms.
Global Media and China. https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231161658