Who governs our digital spaces?

Digital spaces often feel informal. Messages are sent quickly, documents are shared spontaneously, decisions happen in passing. This informality can feel liberating, especially in youth work, where hierarchy is often intentionally softened. But over time, something else becomes visible: even the most informal digital spaces are governed.

The question is not whether governance exists, but whether it is recognised.

At Magnet and IJGD, many of our digital practices emerged through necessity. A messaging app to coordinate quickly. A shared folder to keep things accessible. An online board to support co-creation. None of these choices felt political at the time. They felt practical. But practice accumulates. And what begins as convenience slowly becomes structure.

Governance often hides in these structures. In who creates the group. In who moderates it. In who has editing rights, and who does not. In whose messages receive responses, and whose are silently absorbed. Digital spaces do not erase power — they reorganise it.

One of the risks of digital work is that responsibility becomes diffused. Decisions appear collective, but accountability is unclear. When something goes wrong — when someone feels excluded, overwhelmed, or unsafe — it is difficult to name who is responsible, or how the space could have been governed differently.

This is particularly sensitive in youth organisations, where participation and trust are central. Young people are often invited into digital spaces without clear agreements about roles, boundaries or care. The intention is inclusion. The result can be uncertainty.

At Magnet and IJGD, we began to understand governance not as control, but as clarity. Naming who stewards a tool does not limit participation; it protects it. Agreeing on when and how platforms are used does not reduce flexibility; it creates shared expectations. Governance, when done well, makes participation safer rather than smaller.

We also learned that governance is not only organisational. It is cultural. It shows up in tone, in pacing, in what is rewarded and what is ignored. A digital space governed by urgency produces different behaviour than one governed by care. A space governed by visibility privileges different voices than one governed by listening.

These dynamics rarely appear in strategy documents, yet they shape everyday experience. Who feels entitled to speak. Who withdraws quietly. Who carries emotional labour. Who absorbs the cost of constant availability.

Asking who governs our digital spaces is therefore not a technical question. It is an ethical one. It asks whether our digital practices reflect our stated values, or quietly undermine them. It asks whether power is acknowledged, shared and revisited — or left to operate invisibly.

Digital governance is never neutral, and it is never finished. It must be renegotiated as contexts change, as people enter and leave, as new tools appear. Avoiding this conversation does not eliminate governance; it simply makes it unaccountable.

At Magnet and IJGD, we have come to see digital governance as a form of care. A way of holding space responsibly, rather than leaving people to navigate it alone. It is slower and sometimes uncomfortable. But it allows digital participation to be intentional rather than accidental.

And perhaps that is the real question behind all digital transformation: not who has access, but who carries responsibility for the spaces we create together.

Output of the project “Digital Navigator”, 2024-2025, co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.