Media platforms and social accountability: Dynamics, practices and discourses

MAPS examines digital media platforms as crucial sites for accountability processes and debates across a range of global contexts. The primary question motivating the project is: How is accountability is produced, enacted and articulated in the contemporary media environment?
To generate answers, it examines three interrelated aspects of accountability: (1) the shifting dynamics of accountability, or the ways in which new media technologies shape the ways in which accountability is claimed and enacted in online interactions between citizens and public and private organisations; (2) discourses of accountability, or the ways in which accountability is defined and contested in public debates over online media platforms; (3) and practices and policies of accountability, or the ways in which governments and civil
society actors try to enforce media platform accountability, as well as how the platforms respond to accountability demands in efforts to reclaim their legitimacy.