Platform Badges for Civic Communication: An Interdisciplinary Discussion of a Risk Mitigation Measure Pursuant to Art. 35 DSA

To promote civility in public discourse on online platforms while respecting user freedoms, this paper explores a voluntary user badge system. By asking users to commit to civic norms of discourse, this system rewards their commitment with increased visibility, offering a potentially effective but underutilised approach to fostering constructive engagement. We examine different design options for these badges from an interdisciplinary perspective, assessing their potential benefits and risks in terms of discourse quality and users’ fundamental rights, particularly within the context of the attention economy and the challenges posed by disinformation as well as conflict-driven and emotionally negatively charged content. The badge system aims to introduce a new logic of attention distribution to digital platforms, strengthening the structural conditions for civic communication. Through this analysis, we aim to contribute to platform governance from the perspectives of both political communication studies and legal studies.