INcrease Corporate political responsibility and Accountability (INCA)

Project Information

INCA

Grant agreement ID: 101061653

DOI

10.3030/101061653

Project closed

EC signature date 7 June 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 2 999 991,25

EU contribution

€ 2 999 991,25

Coordinated by

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - INCA (INcrease Corporate political responsibility and Accountability (INCA))

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

INCA project investigates the impact that so-called digital platforms have on European democracies and institutions. Indeed, while promoting economic growth and labour transformations, these platforms pose challenges to policymakers and citizens in relation to people’ participation in decision-making processes, wealth inequalities and erosion of trust into public institutions. In particular, so-called GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) are becoming more and more infrastructures for opinion-making, labour organization and political debate. Their increasing power in shaping and influencing such issues through lobbying, industrial relations and cultural impact opened up a wide debate on the way to deal with these transformations. While European societies grew up based on liberal democracies and institutions with their capacity to sustain a coordinated market economy, today their role seems to be reduced because of the difficulties to regulate platforms’ corporate power that spread through politics, economy and culture.
INCA aims to:
• define forms to sustain trust in institutions and new models of governance capable to combine the growth of platforms with social inclusion and citizens participation in decision making processes;
• stimulate alternative business models and industrial relations so to make GAFAM and platforms accountable to social fairness while preserving their innovation;
• to clarify the way GAFAM influence European citizens opinion conditioning democratic processes.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The economic impact of Big Tech as been at the centre of several activities. WP5 and 2 explored the impact of these companies on industrial relations on multiple scales: European, national and local.
The qualitative research – mainly based on semi-structured interviews – has been fully completed providing an in-depth analysis of how industrial relations developed in 4 different European countries (D5.4 and D5.5). The conclusions of this field work merged with WP2 analysis of platforms’ infrastructural impact on economic democracy in order to provide Policy Recommendations on fairer Industrial Relations practices and regulations in Platform Economy (D5.6 and Milestone 7).

The political role of Big Tech has been investigated mainly assessing the extent to which Big Tech influenced the European law-making process in the context f the DSA and of the DMA (D4.2) and it is planned to go on also in the next reporting period.
The evaluation of the societal dimension of Big Tech has been conducted mainly through the analysis of corporate political discourse (D3.4) that lead to construction of a database of discursive topics (D3.3 and Milestone 5) through the collection of data gathered in the first reporting period. At the same time, we worked on the ways Big Tech are perceived by EU citizens. A large survey on more than 20.000 respondents from 15 countries has been conducted (D6.2) and the statistical analysis of survey data is underway.

Through the activation of OIL (Open Innovation Labs) INCA is not only investigating the role of GAFAM in the social, economic and political ecosystem of Bologna, Bucharest and Barcelona, but is transforming its research into impact through the active engagement of local stakeholders in the definition of existing and potential alternative platforms to Big Tech. The work of impact and engagement of the OIL is supposed to go on for all the next reporting period. Together with them, the Think Tank organisation plan (D10.5) has been prepared and the definition of the legal features of this entity - whose aim is to give the project a life beyond its duration - is underway.

Regarding the dissemination, the research results elaborated mainly in WP1 and 2 have been translated into contents for the WP9, achieving the Milestone 3: the opening of INCA exhibition on the infrastructures of digital technologies has been scheduled for September 2025 in Bologna; the video-documentary on the power of data has been recorded and now is under editing process; the teaching module on the history and challenges of digital technologies is under testing in a school in Bologna.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In a number of ways, empirically and theoretically, the project extends the state of the arts regarding the role of platforms in the economy and the society.

First, to our knowledge, apart from a number of anecdotical accounts, the dearth of large-scale empirical studies that empirically investigate the ideological penetration of large platforms' rhetorics in the public discourse opens the question of the extent to which large platforms have been successful in creating a consensus regarding their role in the economy and the society and how strong the rooting of this narrative is. From this perspective, we offer the first large-scale empirical study on the discourse on GAFAM in European media in the time span 2007-2022. The study gives a clear account of the reactions to such self-portraits and of the recurring political issues that the operations of large platforms trigger.

Second, despite a question that is central to the study of interest groups’ influence is how groups frame political issues in order to achieve their lobbying goals, research on why specific frames are successful to achieve lobbying goals is scarce. We provide an empirical account that explains that successful lobbying attempts put forward frames that resonate with the discursive trends that innervate media discourse. In this respect, rather than the endowment of financial resource to fund lobbying expenses, is the quality of lobbying capabilities and the ability of these latter to capture the sentiment that resonates with media discourse.

Third, INCA project conducted a large survey on more than 20.000 respondents from 15 countries (D6.2). This is probably one of the most relevant database regarding the attitude of European citizens towards large digital platforms.

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