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Reference
Vergne, J.P. (2025), Make Social Media Social Again: How Platform Interoperability Can Fix Social Media and Future-Proof Democracy. Journal of Management Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.70048
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Welcome to Revise and Resubmit 🎙️✨
Today we’re diving into a paper with a title that reads like a manifesto and a warning all at once:
👉 “Make Social Media Social Again: How Platform Interoperability Can Fix Social Media and Future-Proof Democracy”
Written by J.P. Vergne and published in the prestigious Journal of Management Studies — yes, that’s right, a top-tier FT50 journal 🏆📚 — this essay doesn’t just complain about social media… it reframes it.
We’re used to hearing that social media is killing democracy 🧨🗳️, but this paper flips the script:
maybe platforms aren’t fueling the decline of political democracy… maybe they’re mostly documenting it 📉👀 — while at the very same time helping revive organizational democracy through things like DAOs – Decentralized Autonomous Organizations 🧬🌐.
At the heart of the essay is a sharp, elegant idea: the “social media platform trilemma” ⚖️⚡
No single platform can give us all three at once:
🗣️ Free speech
💸 Free usage
🛡️ Safe usage
Try to maximize one, and you start to bend or break the others. So if no single platform can do it all, what if the industry could?
That’s where the big move comes in: platform interoperability 🔗✨
Just like email works across Gmail, Outlook, Proton, and beyond, this paper argues that social media could — and should — work across platforms too. Interoperability, enforced through regulation, could:
Spark real competition on merit 🏁
Speed up innovation at the edges 🚀
Allow different platforms to specialize in different democratic benefits
Unlock network effects between platforms, not just inside them 🌐↔️🌐
And crucially, align the infrastructure of the internet with democratic values 🏛️❤️
Instead of blaming the internet for democracy’s problems, this article is a clarion call 📣 to use that infrastructure strategically — to make social media truly social again and to future-proof democracy.
So as you listen, think with us:
🌍 If email can talk across providers, why can’t your social feeds do the same — and what would democracy look like if they did? 🤔
A huge thank you to J.P. Vergne, to the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies, and to John Wiley & Sons Ltd., publishers of this remarkable article in the prestigious Journal of Management Studies (FT50) 🙏📘
If you enjoy deep dives into cutting-edge research like this, don’t forget to:
🎧 Subscribe to “Revise and Resubmit” on Spotify
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📺 And subscribe to our YouTube channel: “Weekend Researcher”
Because if interoperability can rewire democracy…
what might it do to the way we read, share, and think about research itself? 🚀📖
