The AoIR Flashpoint Symposium in June 2025, hosted by the Platform Governance, Media & Technology Lab (ZeMKI, University of Bremen), brought together over 100 researchers and policy experts from more than 30 countries and 60 institutions to discuss emerging challenges and opportunities of tech governance. The two-day event featured over 50 presentations, including three plenary talks by leading scholars in platform and AI governance, a workshop on large language models as tools and objects of study, and showcased a wide range of global and interdisciplinary perspectives.
The governance of platforms and (generative) AI has become increasingly critical as these technologies profoundly shape public discourse, societal norms, and policymaking. The advent of tools such as ChatGPT continues and intensifies longstanding challenges from social media, such as misinformation, bias, and hate speech. With ongoing shifts in the tech landscape, platform governance research is at a turning point. Growing frustration with corporate platforms has spurred a wave of alternatives, including alt-tech, reactionary platforms, and federated systems. Meanwhile, emerging technologies such as generative AI present platforms with a host of new challenges, as well as significant regulatory scrutiny. We see public attention and daily routines move from social media to generative AI. We also observe a powerful and concerning alignment of technology companies and the US administration. At the same time, the European Union and governments around the world aim to reign in both the excesses as well as the freedoms of technological advancements.
This roundtable builds on lessons of the Flashpoint Symposium, and invites the AoIR community to reflect on and continue the conversation around the evolving challenges of platform and AI governance. The discussion will be kicked off by Taylor Annabell, Blake Hallinan, Emillie de Keulenaar, Thales Lelo, and Rebecca Scharlach.
