The project, which is located between media law and computer science, employs a novel approach to visualize the functioning of news distribution on digital platforms and thus offer media regulation opportunities for new regulatory approaches. It is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Societal communication has changed profoundly in the wake of ongoing digitalisation. As new players are active and algorithmic systems as well as other technologies are used, new approaches to media regulation may also be required. While the ideal of maintaining media diversity has been the primary concern so far, it is now no longer scarce channels but complex systems of the most diverse actors that determine what chance a certain content has of being perceived.
Researchers from the Universität Hamburg and the Leibniz Institute for Media Research are developing a new so-called “Socio-Technical Ecosystem Architecture Method” (STEAM) using the case studies “Facebook” or “Facebook News” and the American social networking platform “Parler”.
The method provides a holistic view of news dissemination in an ecosystem such as that of news dissemination on Facebook, and helps to map these ecosystems with their relationships between actors, data flows and software components in such a way that problems can be identified and, if necessary, provide linkage opportunities for new regulatory approaches.
The project is one of seven project consortia from the social and technical sciences funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. All selected projects are scheduled to run for three to four years and will each receive funding of around 1.5 million euros. Further information on the Volkswagen Foundation’s initiative “Artificial Intelligence and the Society of the Future”.
Development of the Method
The project develops a socio-technical ecosystem architecture methodology. This methodology builds on existing architecture concepts in computer science and complements them with normative concepts as well as frameworks with a legal and ethical background and horizon scanning approaches. This allows for a holistic description of an ecosystem, its actors and its action dynamics, and reveals risks to public communication as well as suitable starting points for counteracting them in a regulatory way.
Novel actors and technologies used by them, particularly related to artificial intelligence (AI), have gained relevance in the generation, aggregation, selection, curation, and prioritization of content. At the time a content item is displayed in an individual’s sphere of attention, numerous decisions are made beforehand that influence the content’s dissemination and the probability of ending up as part of the individual’s media repertoire. Specifically, various actors (e.g. content creators, digital platforms or content providers) involved in the entire process from content creation to content provision have influence on societal communication. In this relation, these actors also increasingly use algorithmic systems and, in particular, AI. Two examples illustrate this phenomenon:
- The first illustrative example is provided by Facebook and its news-aggregating application Facebook News. The platform is constituted by a constellation of human, technical, and institutional actors and dynamics as well as interdependencies among them. Ultimately, human curators, together with recommendation and filtering algorithms, generate a selection of media contributions that are offered to the user. However, the pool of available contributions is already narrowed by various limiting factors in the broader environment. Facebook, together with external partners, selects media outlets that are admitted. Furthermore, Facebook determines publisher guidelines that providers need to adhere to and monetization schemes that publishers need to agree to. Therefore, the media repertoire of a user of Facebook News is co-determined by a range of decisions made by various actors.
- The second example considers the American social networking platform Parler, which is often discussed for user content involving far-right posts, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories. In January 2021, three companies exerted meaningful influence on the accessibility and usage of Parler. Both major mobile platform providers – Google and Apple – removed Parler from their respective app stores on iOS and Android. In addition, Amazon excluded Parler from its cloud hosting service Amazon Web Services (AWS). Through this intervention by Amazon, Parler was apparently unable to operate its platform and had to go offline. The example emphasizes that parties who fulfil different functions in making content accessible have an influence on what content is brought to the attention of users without prior judicial or regulatory decision to do so and without having been in the spotlight as important actors in societal communication.
Both cases demonstrate challenges to pre-existing mechanisms for safeguarding societal communication and its essential functions. The cases might hint at problems for relevant qualities of societal communication, which are not covered by the current communication law system. Therefore, we need to fundamentally rethink how we can continue to ensure that socially relevant communication takes place both openly and freely.
The Socio-Technical Ecosystem Architecture Method (STEAM) offers a comprehensive perspective on the dissemination of information within an ecosystem. STEAM was developed by integrating architectural and normative thinking over three iterations using a Design Science Research (DSR) approach.
Findings
The project findings are available as videos on YouTube:
Video 1: What Is “STEAM”? (also available in German)
Video 2: AI Overview Instead of Journalism? (also available in German)
In addition, infographics using Google News and Parler as examples illustrate the flow of information within the ecosystem.
Publications
- Burmeister, Fabian; and Kurtz, Christian, „Toward an Interdisciplinary Method for Ecosystem Architecture-Guided Regulatory Reasoning“ (2024). In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 247-262). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
- Burmeister, Fabian; Kurtz, Christian; Spürkel, Josefine; Mast, Tobias; Schirmer, Ingrid; and Böhmann, Tilo, „Interdisciplinary Architecture Modeling for Regulating Digital Business Ecosystems“ (2024). PACIS 2024 Proceedings. 3. https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2024/track06_dpe/track06_dpe/3
- Burmeister, F., Kurtz, C. & Schirmer, I. Governing Information Privacy in Data Ecosystems with Architectural Thinking. Electron Markets 35, 67 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-025-00808-5
- Kurtz, Christian; Burmeister, Fabian; Wittner, Felix; Jacobs, Marius; Semmann, Michael; Simon, Judith; Schulz, Wolfgang; Schirmer, Ingrid; and Böhmann, Tilo, „Interdisciplinary Boundary Spanning: Guidance for Collaboration Between the Disciplines of Information Systems, Law, and Ethics“ (2025). Business & Information Systems Engineering. pp 1 -12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-024-00920-4
- Kurtz, Christian; and Burmeister, Fabian, „From Opacity to Transparency: Legal Spotlight on Ecosystem Architectures“ (2024). AMCIS 2024 Proceedings. https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2024/ict_global/ict_global/3/
- Stratmann, Magdalena; Mast, Tobias; Spürkel, Josefine; Burmeister, Fabian; Kurtz, Christian; Soulier, Eloise: „Visualizing Regulatory Ecosystems: A New Approach to Mapping EU Regulations as Architectures – The Case of the AI Act“ (2026). Computer Law & Security Review (61/2026). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2026.106333
