Media / Publication
June 01, 2026

Shared responsibility, unequal power: Mapping the limitations of multi-stakeholderism in the EU’s digital governance

With the adoption of the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, Artificial Intelligence Act and European Media Freedom Act, the European Union has established an ambitious regulatory framework to oversee digital platforms and AI systems. This article by AlgoSoc researchers Charis Papaevangelou, Sabrina Kutscher, Natali Helberger, José van Dijck and Thomas Poell, maps the governance stakeholders involved in the operationalization of these four instruments and examines their distribution of powers and responsibilities.

Building on existing typologies of platform governance and regulatory space theory, we introduce an analytical framework that foregrounds three structural elements – competencies, capacities and connectedness – alongside eight regulatory functions, ranging from agenda-setting to enforcement and discourse shaping. We then operationalize this framework in the context of the standardization ecosystem, highlighting the growing prominence of standardization bodies as central actors in multi-stakeholderism. Our analysis shows that, despite the promises of multi-stakeholderism for more democratic and cooperative governance configurations, in practice this approach often disregards material power asymmetries. This reality privileges technocratic expertise and industry stakeholders over public-interest actors, ultimately hindering a more equitable and democratic governance paradigm. We conclude by arguing that pursuing strategic autonomy, as the European Union boasts, requires reducing the regulatory power of private actors and strengthening capacities of actors normatively and materially grounded in the public interest.

To continue reading please visit:
https://doi.org/10.1386/jdmp_00201_1

This open access article was published in Journal of Digital Media & Policy.

Papaevangelou, C., Kutscher, S., Helberger, N., Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2026). Shared responsibility, unequal power: Mapping the limitations of multi-stakeholderism in the EU’s digital governance. Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 17(AI, Governance and Public Policy), 55–80. https://doi.org/10.1386/jdmp_00201_1

Keywords: Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, Artificial Intelligence Act, European Media Freedom Act, standardization bodies, platform regulation, regulatory space, multistakeholder governance