Governing Internet Expression: How Public and Private Regulation Shape Expression Governance

Governing public expression has historically constituted a key element of public policy, and in the 20th and the 21st century has remained an important tool for both state and nonstate actors. The following article will look at two specific cases of expression governance—the content regulatory regimes in the U.S. and on Facebook—in order to understand how the process of content regulation plays out in public and private contexts. This institutional distinction between public and private, and the manner in which content regulatory practices traverse it, has important implications for both outcomes and process of content regulation.