The Digital Content & Platform Governance Lab examines how digital platforms, public policy, and changing media systems shape the production, circulation, and sustainability of content online. Situated in Burnaby within the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, the lab brings together researchers, students, journalists, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to investigate the governance challenges emerging in platformized communication environments. We look at multi-level consequences of platform power, forms of disentanglements from platform power, and emerging alternative platform environments. With that we explore how digital transformations impact journalism, cultural production, public communication, and democracy.

The lab's work is grounded in a comparative and collaborative approach that recognizes differences in institutional dynamics across national, political, and economic contexts. Our work is based on partnerships with scholars and practitioners in Canada and internationally and is funded through public grants such as the SSHRC Insight Grant, SSHRC Insight Development Grant and the Transatlantic Partnership Grant, as well as through SFU funding opportunities. Currently, we work across three main research areas:

Building on the international EDIT (An Exploration of Independent Journalism's Epistemologies) project, we investigate how independent journalism is understood, practiced, and valued across different countries and contexts. With this work, we explore the role of independent journalism in society while examining the diverse conditions under which journalistic independence can flourish or be sustained in challenging conditions.

We also study the consequences of emerging regulatory responses to platform power. Through the SSHRC Insight Grant project, Laws Regulating the Use of News Content and their (Un)intended Consequences for Journalism, we investigate to what extent policies designed to address platform-journalism relations impact news production, distribution, sustainability, and public access to information. Attention is paid to both intended and unintended effects of regulation, as well as differences in outcomes across jurisdictions.

A third area of inquiry focuses on cultural industries and media organizations operating under conditions of technological and economic disruption and crisis. Building on the Cultural Industries in Acute Crisis research project, we examine how cultural and media organizations respond to economic shocks, technological change, platform dependencies, and broader societal crises. This research seeks to understand the resilience, vulnerabilities, and adaptive capacities of cultural producers and institutions in rapidly changing environments.

Across these research streams, the researchers at the Digital Content & Platform Governance Lab seek to generate theoretically informed, empirically grounded, and publicly engaged knowledge to contribute to contemporary debates about platform governance, journalism, cultural industries, and the future of democratic communication.