In recent years, the responsibility of social media platforms towards their users and society at large has become a major political issue. However, the regulatory responses to the crisis of social media are still mostly considered unsatisfactory, as demonstrated by the widespread criticism of the German Network Enforcement Act of 2017. This article compares the current constitutional discourse on social media regulation with the debates that accompanied the last major transformation of the media landscape: the rise of broadcasting. While we certainly do not find a roadmap for social media regulation in the past, the key concept of the broadcasting discourse—the idea of media as a sphere of ‘institutional freedom’—can be applied to the challenges of today and can be used to strengthen the democratic function of social media

中文翻译：

---

让社交媒体成为民主的工具

近年来，社交媒体平台对其用户和整个社会的责任已成为一个重大的政治问题。然而，监管对社交媒体危机的反应仍然大多被认为是不令人满意的，正如对 2017 年德国网络执法法案的广泛批评所证明的那样。 本文将当前关于社交媒体监管的宪法话语与伴随上一次的辩论进行了比较。媒体格局的重大转变：广播的兴起。虽然我们在过去肯定找不到社交媒体监管的路线图，但广播话语的关键概念——媒体作为“制度自由”领域的理念——可以应用于当今的挑战，并可以用于加强社交媒体的民主功能