Download PDF.
This dissertation explores ways in which social media governance can be improved through the practical application of theories and principles of justice. Three empirical research studies demonstrate that current platform governance practices exacerbate the very harms they seek to mitigate, due in large part to the influence of punitive criminal justice models that are structurally incapable of producing equitable governance outcomes. Informed by transformative justice, social media governance can be reframed from a method for control to a practice of collective care, requiring a fundamental restructuring of the systems and logics that currently govern online spaces.