To protect or empower? A critical exploration of legislators’ views on social media user agency

Empowering citizens by enhancing their agency is a cornerstone of human rights theory, yet it is unclear whether today’s governments afford human agency the same primacy online (i.e. user agency) as offline. Laws combating social media harms are especially consequential for user agency. Such regulations aim to make the online sphere safer, but how policymakers weigh empowering users against protecting them is often unclear. This project analyzes the formation of Ireland’s Online Safety and Media Regulation Act (OSMR) of 2022. Through a critical frame analysis of 15 legislative debates, it finds that Irish legislators predominantly framed social media users as needing protection and, for the most part, did not seek to empower them. Instead, legislators often presented themselves as victims of harm and made ambiguous statements about whom OSMR served. Such findings reveal a lack of consideration for users’ agency and underscore the need for meaningful user engagement in policymaking.