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From self to co-regulation in the EU’s approach to disinformation: The framing power of Big Tech business lobbies in the lead to the Digital Services Act

par Oleart, Alvaro ;Bouza García, Luis
Référence International Review of Public Policy, 7, 2
Publication Publié, 2025

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

The increasing political power of social media companies over the last two decades has sparked significant policy debates in the EU. We analyse the emerging regulatory struggle by focusing on one specific dimension: disinformation. The most influential initiative took place within the Digital Services Act (DSA), approved in 2022. This approach, characterised as ‘co-regulation’, breaks away from the EU’s previously dominant approach of self-regulation for digital platforms by trying to regulate with these platforms rather than leaving them to set their own policies. The best illustration of this approach is the second version of the Code of Practice on disinformation, which has been ultimately included within the DSA as a Code of Conduct in 2025. We ask: How did the European Commission come to adopt a co-regulatory approach to disinformation? Using data from public consultations, meetings with the Commission, and interviews, we conduct a process-tracing to uncover the genealogy of the EU's co-regulatory framework from the 2018 High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Disinformation (HLEG) until 2025. We conclude that preemptive cooperation by the platforms, as expressed in the HLEG and the Code of Conduct, has sidelined regulatory alternatives.