Speaker Bio
Mathilde Sanders is an organization scientist and postdoctoral researcher. She works for the interdisciplinary group Governing the Digital Society at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Her research focuses on ownership, business models and the governance of (old) media firms and non-profit or public, decentralized, open source social networks (DOSNs). Her empirical case-study is PubHubs, a joint research project with Radboud University Nijmegen and PublicSpaces. Mathilde holds a PhD in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and a Master in Political Science (University of Amsterdam). Before moving to Utrecht University, Mathilde was a researcher at the thinktank Rathenau Instituut in The Hague. She also worked at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (RSM) and the Journalism School in Utrecht (HU). She was a journalist during the first part of her career.
Translating public values to the design of a public platform
Mathilde Sanders, Utrecht University
Tuesday 28th November 2023. 13:00-14:00 GMT. The Buncar.
Commercial social media platforms, such as Facebook or X, focus on ratings, page views and user engagement for advertisers and this may reduce user trust in media (polarization, filter bubbles, disinformation etc.). The aim of a public organization is not to make profit, but to create public value for citizens and other stakeholders. This process of public value creation in the digital sphere is complex, however, and there is a lack of understanding on how to translate abstract public values,such as privacy, inclusion or safety, into concrete (governance) solutions for organizational, moderation and software design. In her talk, Mathilde will share some of her research findings on how public values could be embedded in decentralized social media networks (DOSNs) in general and – more specifically – in a new DOSN called PubHubs that is currently being built with Dutch government funding by cyber security scholars and developers at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (The Netherlands). The design of PubHubs and its user requirements is explored in collaboration with a large coalition of Dutch public organizations (such as public broadcasters, libraries and patient federations) that join forces under the name of PublicSpaces to reclaim the internet as a public domain for the common good.