Political debates, campaigns, and advertising increasingly take place on online platforms. However, research on election communication has been significantly hampered as formerly accessible data sources have been withdrawn or commercialised. With the implementation of the EU Digital Services Act...

This article examines the applicability of the Digital Services Act (DSA) to ChatGPT, arguing that it should be classified as a hybrid of the two types of hosting services: online search engines and platforms. This requires classifying search engines as hosting services, which we show is...

Numerous empirical studies indicate that social media use is correlated with, and sometimes might be causing, mental harms like addiction, anxiety and depression, or lowering of cognitive abilities. In 2023, the European Parliament called on the European Commission to introduce new rules to...

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Mobile apps have transformed how we live, work and connect – but at what cost? This book examines the immense power Apple and Google wield over society, arising from their control of app stores as well as mobile operating systems and...

The modern digital public sphere requires effective content moderation systems that balance the interests of states, technology companies, and the public. This article examines how two pieces of legislation establish regulatory intermediaries in an attempt to strike this balance: the EU's...

Trusted flaggers have long played a role in content moderation: a bilateral, voluntary affair between online platforms and individuals or organisations that are afforded prioritised access to the content moderation process. Due to their expertise, they are trusted to 'flag' illegal or harmful...

On October 4, 2021, all services provided by Meta Platforms, Inc. (then Facebook, Inc.) became unavailable unexpectedly for all its worldwide users for a period of about six hours. We use detailed high‐frequency tracking data from smartphones, tablets and desktop computers of thousands of Meta...