Governing the gatekeepers: is formal regulation needed?

Robin Mansell is Professor of New Media and the Internet at the LSE. In the latest post in our series on digital intermediaries and plurality, she argues that intermediaries are influencing media production and dissemination often in ways not fully understood by policymakers, implementing policy without oversight. Regulators have been unable to keep up with the pace of change and still rely on legislation geared towards traditional market structures. To protect the public interest, they will need to shift emphasis to a more holistic view of the media ecology rather than the piecemeal approach of the past.