EU Platform Regulation and Its Impact on the Media and Communication Industry

In the past decade, platforms like Apple, Google, Amazon or Netflix started to enter and dominate the media and communication sector. Authorities and regulators are struggling to assess those powerful companies since years. By outlining contemporary power structures under consideration of issues raised within the political economy tradition and in platform research, the paper will analyze which factors have to be taken into consideration in order to protect public interest in the age of platformized media and communication markets. A model is proposed, which will be used in two case studies, the anti-trust case against Apple and four international publishers and the WhatsApp/Facebook merger in order to discuss the current proceeding of the EU and to derive suggestions for future cases/approaches. The paper highlights the need for a throughout understanding of cross-sided network effects and the importance of cultural and social public interest objectives for the regulation of media platforms