THE CHESHIRE CAT OF SOCIAL MEDIA: VALUES IN PLATFORM POLICIES

Value is fundamental for social media platforms, not only in theeconomic sense but also in the sense of normative principles like community and free speech.Policy documents are pivotal sites for the expression of values and present a public-facingaccount of the roles and responsibilities assigned to various actors, including individualusers, third parties, governments and social media corporations. While prior research hasexamined the construction of individual values such as privacy and transparency in platformpolicies, there has been no holistic account of the values invoked in these documents.Combining a dictionary-based analysis with a qualitative content analysis, we present thefirst comprehensive study of the values presented in the policy documents of five majorsocial media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Our analysisreveals that policy documents invoke a large number of values that seemingly point toconflicting priorities and commitments. However, these values can be organized in fouroverarching principles that were consistent across platforms: community, expression,privacy, and improvement. Each principle assigns responsibility for the enactment of thesevalues and by that allows platforms to limit their ethical responsibility for executing thevalues they publicly promote. Values can thus be described as the “Cheshire cat” of socialmedia platform policies – they look magical, but once touched, may assume a different shape,pop up in an alternative location, or even disappear.