Big Tech & the State, Media, and Democracy

POSTPONED: The Rising Power of Big Tech

Due to illness we have to cancel the event for March 25, 2025.

A new date will be announced asap.

In a moment of rapid change for global politics, Big Tech platforms and their owners are shaping up to be international power brokers. Trump’s White house cozies up to Silicon Valley oligarchs as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and clashes with the EU over its platform laws. How does the power of Big Tech affect our democracies, and can it be contained? In this panel discussion, researchers Theresa Josephine Seipp and Paddy Leerssen will discuss their latest research on platform power and regulation.

Paddy Leerssen will present new research on the international political economy of platform regulation. He will discuss state-government relationships in the EU and US, and how these have changed under the new Trump presidency and its new alliances with platform oligarchs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Theresa will present findings from her research on platforms and the media sector. Her work explores the intricate and intertwined relationship between platforms and the media, and how these drive concentration and shifting power over (public) opinion formation processes – often to non-European, non-journalistic actors. A key focus of the discussion will be the potentially dangerous consequences of opinion steering and manipulation through social media platforms, as well as the growing dependence of (European) media on technologies provided by Big Tech companies.

About the speakers

Theresa Josephine Seipp is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) and part of the research team at the AI, Media, and Democracy Lab.

Paddy Leersen is a legal researcher and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam. He is specialised in platform regulation and content moderation, with a focus on transparency and data access.

Petros Terzis (moderator) is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, and an incoming Lecturer in Digital Law at King’s College London. His work focuses on the role of law in the political economy of computing.