Governing the Digital Commons

In modern sociotechnical systems, digital commons, as the co-production of data or knowledge and community via networked systems (e.g., de Rosenay, 2020;Morell, 2014), are increasingly prevalent and visible. Along with the people and digital resources produced, governance regarding participation, access, and use of data and knowledge is necessary to foster engagement (Madison et al., 2009). Such commons governance is polycentric, with many centers of decisionmaking, addressing both dilemmas associated with underlying knowledge resources and dilemmas associated with shared communication and coordination strategies needed to produce effective governance itself (Sanfilippo & Strandburg, 2021).

From platforms dedicated to crowd-sourcing and online creation communities-including MTurk, Upwork, Wikipedia, and FoldIt-to emergent subcommunities dedicated to everything from social movements to niche hobbies, via Facebook Groups or specific Toks, modern networked interactions produce significant information resources as digital commons (Fuchs, 2020;Kwet, 2020). This mini-track explores community governance of innovation and creativity, immaterial resources long associated with intellectual property from an interdisciplinary perspective via the lens of the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework.

The GKC framework (Frischmann et al., 2014) structures institutional analysis of a variety of knowledge commons, including digital commons, in order to identify strategies, norms, and rules that structure participation in and knowledge resources throughout their lifecycle. The framework, rooted in the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, specifically applies to data, information, and knowledge resources and processes and interactions that govern and shape them (Sanfilippo et al., 2021). Through this approach, it is possible to analyze that which makes governance of intangible information and data resources unique, as well as analyze and compare the processes by which strategies, norms, and rules regarding things like online privacy and security, trust and safety, and data quality develop and change over time and across contexts.

Considering the interplay between these factors in complex realities, this mini-track presents three case studies that illustrate the pervasive nature of digital commons challenges in current events. In "Privacy Fragility in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing: Lessons from the 23andMe Journey," Koltan, Magoon, and Yates conceptualize privacy fragility as heavily dependent on data governance over time, rather than simply on the static conditions under which data is collected, stored and used. The paper uses the case of the consumer genetic testing company, 23andMe, and its recent bankruptcy to explore governance failures in the digital commons constructed via interplay between consumers, genetic data, and commercial genomic data processors and aggregators.

In "Governing Manipulative and Synthetic Content on Social Media Platforms," Kaushik and Sanfilippo explore the challenges with digital commons around sociotechnical content production and its impact on vulnerable community members, including teens and young adults. Through a case study of GenAI governance on social media platforms and third parties that produce advertisements for social media, analysis highlights the governance failure and loopholes that allow scams and deepfakes to manipulate and deceive users.

These case studies highlight how social, cultural, political, and technical and economic elements and contexts are shape the characteristics of digital knowledge commons and associated governance, dilemmas, and shared resource management. The also suggest wider implications regarding, collective action problems in the modern digital economy which place stakeholders in tension with one another; this particularly clear around decision-makers with commercial interests in contrast with impacted users and data subjects who may be harmed by poor or insufficient governance. At a time when deepfakes, misinformation, and online manipulation, as well as data breaches, degradation of digital infrastructure, and pervasive ownership and intellectual property challenges around AI training data and generated materials pose such significant challenges across online communities and digitally mediated interactions, deeper understanding of effective governance is more important than ever.

By identifying sources of governance conflict and failure, the mini-track aims to build conversation among interdisciplinary scholars to develop best practices and design principles that sustainably support crowd sourcing, data governance and protection, collaboration, peer production, and various other sociotechnical processes in healthy online and digitally mediated communities.