“Usership” as a Framework: Reimagining Platform Governance through Intersectional Narratives

Sultana et al. (2024) introduce the concept of “usership” as a civics-oriented metaphor for understanding marginalized users’ relationship to platforms. This research would expand and operationalize “usership” by gathering qualitative narratives from users with intersecting marginalized identities (e.g., disabled, racialized, LGBTQ+—see Lyu et al., 2024; Divon et al., 2025), and then co-creating policy and UX prototypes that explicitly recognize, protect, and empower their “usership rights.” Possible outputs include new reporting workflows, accessible moderation interfaces, or participatory governance mechanisms that make “usership” visible and actionable in everyday platform interactions. This challenges the prevailing “one-size-fits-all” model and could inspire a wave of research and development focused on digital citizenship and justice in platform design.

References:

1. Platform gaslighting: A user-centric insight into social media corporate communications of content moderation. Tom Divon, Carolina Are, Pam Briggs (2025). Platforms & Society.
2. A Civics-oriented Approach to Understanding Intersectionally Marginalized Users' Experience with Hate Speech Online. Achhiya Sultana, Dipto Das, S. Alam, Mohammad Shidujaman, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed (2024). International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development.
3. "I Got Flagged for Supposed Bullying, Even Though It Was in Response to Someone Harassing Me About My Disability.": A Study of Blind TikTokers’ Content Moderation Experiences. Yao Lyu, Jie Cai, Anisa Callis, Kelley Cotter, John M. Carroll (2024). International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.