Читать книгу Media Freedom - Damian Tambini - Страница 19

Giants, by definition, need control. There is – in theory at least – such a thing as a gentle giant, but for the most part, if giants are not subject to regulation they are likely to trample on us normal-size people, grind our bones, and so forth. Many argue that the large tech platforms are dangerous giants and should be dismembered. Others argue that because they are media that they should benefit from regulatory privileges and freedoms. The tech giants themselves try to have it both ways, claiming that they are speakers and also conduits for the speech of others and do not need regulating, because the market guarantees a plurality of voices.

The discussion is usually about the empirical properties of platforms – ‘do they curate, do they select?’: what is the appropriate backwardlooking metaphor for their role? – rather than about what we want them to do. Theory must take a decisive step and treat the question of whether platforms are media as a complex matter of reflexive social construction. In other words, whether platforms are media is not an a priori question based on empirical observation at the present time; it is a question of whether we as a society want to treat them as media, why and on what terms. In my view it is undeniably the case that liberal democracy will continue to require some mediating function of noise reduction in the development of public opinion: democracy needs media. But in an all-internet world, in which ‘everything is mediated’,⁸⁹ only deliberate constitutional design will enable such mediating functions to emerge and to serve the public interest and democracy. Whether and to what extent these are carried out by the large tech platforms in more or less their current form is a secondary question. The role of theory is to lift these dilemmas into the light so that civil society – rather than the fiat of state or private interests and power – can determine their resolution.