Original Research

Regulating broadcasting in the digital age: A critical comparative analysis of India’s framework against global democratic approaches

Anubhav Chakraborty, Anil Philip

Received: 11 Nov. 2025; Accepted: 01 Apr. 2026; Published: 18 June 2026

Copyright: © 2026. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

Background: India’s broadcasting regulatory landscape has undergone significant transformation, yet the Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill of 2023 reveals persistent structural challenges that echo earlier frameworks rather than addressing contemporary digital governance needs.

Objectives: This study traces India’s regulatory evolution from the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995 through the Information Technology Rules of 2021, examining how colonial legacies and institutional choices continue to shape media governance.

Method: Employing a Qualitative Comparative Policy Analysis (QCPA) framework, the research evaluates five jurisdictions: India, the United Kingdom (UK), the European Union (EU), the United States (US) and Australia, across six variables, including governance models, regulatory independence and transparency.

Results: The analysis reveals how mature democracies have developed alternative approaches to platform responsibility that India’s current draft conspicuously lacks.

Conclusion: The Draft Bill centralises authority within the executive branch, applies broadcasting-era standards to algorithmically driven platforms, and relies heavily on delegated legislation while offering limited independent oversight. International frameworks, particularly Australia’s co-regulatory model and the EU’s Digital Services Act (2022), suggest more nuanced approaches balancing state oversight with participatory governance.

Contribution: Rather than representing a meaningful departure, the current draft reflects a pattern of regulatory continuity rooted in a ‘democratic imagination deficit’, where successive Indian frameworks conceive of the regulator as an instrument of state authority rather than a guardian of the public sphere. Effective regulation demands a fundamental reconsideration of institutional design, procedural transparency and stakeholder engagement.

Keywords: broadcasting regulation; co-regulation; user rights; digital media governance; comparative law; platform governance; India.

Introduction

As media consumption shifts to digital platforms, governments worldwide face the challenge of updating broadcasting regulations for the internet era. India is at a crossroads of this transformation. Whilst digital technologies have empowered new content creators and democratised information, they have also prompted regulatory anxieties over misinformation, hate speech and platform power. In its 2023 proposal for the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting signalled a clear intent to modernise media governance, but it has sparked concerns about censorship and executive overreach.

In a landmark development reported by Scroll (2025), the Supreme Court of India directed the central government in July 2025 to articulate its position on crafting social media guidelines. The court emphasised that these guidelines must strike a balance between state sovereignty and online privacy rights. Preceding this, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting introduced the Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, which seeks to modernise and unify the regulation of broadcasting across traditional and digital domains. However, the Draft Bill has been met with widespread criticism from legal experts, media scholars and civil society groups, who have flagged concerns about its executive-heavy design, vague statutory language and the absence of participatory mechanisms. A primary point of opposition is the critique that the Bill merely replicates the structural weaknesses found in earlier frameworks. Critics argue that by following the logic of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995 and the Information Technology Rules of 2021, the current proposal fails to account for the unique complexities of digital era governance.

This critique is neither novel nor uniquely Indian. Around the world, democracies have struggled to regulate digital broadcasting in ways that could be considered universally democratic and at the same time be efficient. The broader question, therefore, emerges: How can democratic states design regulatory systems for digital broadcasting that ensure platform responsibility whilst preserving user autonomy and institutional checks? This study seeks to address that question by undertaking a comparative legal and policy analysis of India’s evolving digital broadcasting regulation in relation to models adopted by several mature democracies, specifically the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). These jurisdictions offer diverse experiences in designing regulatory institutions, enforcing platform obligations and fostering multi-stakeholder engagement, each providing valuable insights into achieving a balance between state oversight and digital freedoms.

The inquiry is guided by the following research questions (RQ):

RQ1: What are the key structural and legal gaps in India’s Draft Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2023?

RQ2: In what ways can the adoption of selected global best practices from mature democracies enhance India’s digital broadcasting governance without compromising democratic freedoms?

Based on these questions, the paper posits two hypotheses (H):

H1: The Draft Bill of 2023 reflects critical weaknesses in its structural design, notably legal ambiguities, centralisation of regulatory powers and inadequate safeguards for user rights.

H2: International regulatory frameworks, particularly those in Australia and the EU offer more nuanced models, employing co-regulation, transparency standards and independent oversight mechanisms absent in the Indian context.

To strengthen the objectivity of the comparative analysis, null hypotheses are also posited for each proposition:

H1₀: The Draft Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2023, does not reflect critical structural weaknesses, and its institutional design adequately addresses the governance demands of contemporary digital broadcasting without meaningful compromise to democratic freedoms or user rights.

H2₀: International regulatory frameworks, including those of Australia and the EU, do not offer meaningfully more nuanced or democratic models than India’s current approach, and the mechanisms of co-regulation, transparency and independent oversight present in those jurisdictions offer no substantive improvement over the Draft Bill’s proposed architecture.

The comparative analysis that follows systematically evaluates the evidence bearing on both the primary hypotheses and their null counterparts across six analytical variables, with the findings informing the conclusions drawn in the final section.

Theoretical foundations of media regulation

The regulation and shaping of media systems has long been a contested terrain, dating back to debates around the invention of the printing press. Scholars have repeatedly emphasised that regulation performs a dual role within democratic theory and critical media studies: On the one hand, it safeguards the media’s capacity to serve the public interest, and on the other, it restrains excesses that may undermine social or cultural values (Freedman 2008; McQuail 2010). With the onset of the digital era, however, these longstanding concerns have acquired new complexity. The boundaries that once distinguished traditional broadcasting from online platforms are increasingly porous, raising questions about whether regulatory frameworks designed for legacy media remain adequate (Flew 2021).

Against this backdrop, three conceptual pillars stand out as particularly significant in contemporary scholarship: The imperative of public interest, the principle of governance and responsibility on the part of platforms and the requirement of regulatory independence (Raboy 2002). These themes, whilst universal in scope, are expressed quite differently across global models. For instance, the UK’s Ofcom model underscores public service obligations within a proportionate regulatory regime. Similarly, the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2018) advances harmonisation through a combination of co-regulatory and self-regulatory mechanisms. Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA 2021) further demonstrates this balance by combining statutory authority with a heavy reliance on industry codes of practice, whereas the US leans towards a First Amendment-oriented tradition that privileges market freedoms over direct intervention. Taken together, these approaches reveal both shared concerns and enduring tensions in adapting traditional regulatory philosophies to the evolving landscape of digital broadcasting and platform governance.

Public interest in media regulation

The idea of public interest has traditionally served as an important anchor for media regulation and control. Rooted in liberal democratic traditions, it presupposes that the media ought to serve collective societal goals such as informed citizenship, democratic deliberation, cultural inclusion and equitable access (Napoli 2001). However, the elasticity of the term ‘public interest’ has often rendered it both powerful and contested (Feintuck & Varney 2006). On the one hand, invoking public interest provides legitimacy to regulatory interventions; on the other hand, it is vulnerable to capitalisation by both the state and the market to serve their own ends.

Contemporary scholarship urges a critical re-examination of this concept. Victor Pickard (2019), for example, argues that public interest must be understood not just as a set of abstract values, but as embedded within the political economy of media systems. Drawing from American media history, Pickard warns that media institutions’ capture by commercial interests undermines democratic needs and calls for reimagining public media as part of democratic infrastructure. Similarly, Des Freedman (2014b) points out that rhetorical commitments to ‘public interest’ often mask neoliberal policy shifts favouring deregulation and privatisation, even as they profess democratic ideals. Natali Helberger (2020) offers a particularly generative intervention in this debate, and her work has direct implications for the design of digital broadcasting regulation. Observing that contemporary platforms curate content through algorithms rather than editorial judgement, Helberger argues that the traditional notion of public interest is no longer sufficient as a standalone regulatory standard. In the broadcast era, public interest functioned as a relatively stable anchor because regulators could assess whether a channel’s programming served collective civic needs for a mass audience. On algorithmically driven platforms, however, content is individualised and ranked differently for each user. This shift makes it structurally challenging to evaluate civic value through a traditional universal lens.

In response, Helberger introduces the concept of ‘public relevance’ as a complementary and context-sensitive standard. This approach prioritises meeting the civic information needs of individuals within algorithmic environments, rather than assuming a homogeneous public that receives identical content. The regulatory implication here is significant. Instead of prescribing exactly what content platforms must carry or prohibit, which is the hallmark of the broadcast model, regulators should instead require platforms to demonstrate that their algorithmic systems support civic exposure and informational diversity at the individual level.

This distinction between public interest and public relevance is far from a mere theoretical exercise. It identifies a specific category error that frequently recurs in regulatory frameworks. This error happens when broadcast era obligations are applied to digital platforms without accounting for the structural differences between editorial and algorithmic curation. India’s Draft Broadcasting Services Bill of 2023 serves as a precise example of this mistake. By extending Programme Codes and content certification requirements uniformly to Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms, the Bill imposes a mass audience regulatory logic onto services that operate through individualised delivery. In doing so, it essentially misdiagnoses the governance challenge.

By contrast, the EU’s Digital Services Act moves closer to a public relevance model. This framework, which this study scores as a high-performing model, mandates systemic risk assessments of algorithmic processes and transparency obligations for recommendation systems. It even includes user rights to opt out of profiling-based curation. Ultimately, Helberger’s framework provides this study with the necessary vocabulary to evaluate whether a regulation’s underlying logic is actually calibrated to the architecture of digital media environments.

Platform responsibility: From self-regulation to co-regulation

The advent of large technology platforms such as Meta, Google and TikTok has fundamentally reshaped the media regulatory landscape, diverging sharply from the traditional focus on constraints like limited broadcast spectrum, national borders and clearly identifiable publishers (Poell 2020; Van Dijck, Poell & De Waal 2018). Digital platforms disrupt these categories through their transnational reach, algorithmic content curation and user-generated content. The idea of platform responsibility has emerged in response to growing concerns over issues like disinformation, hate speech, data manipulation, ‘deepfakes’ and electoral interference online. Scholars such as Tarleton Gillespie (2018) and Sarah T. Roberts (2019) have unpacked the myths of platform neutrality, revealing that platforms are not passive conduits but active curators of content with significant editorial power – albeit exercised opaquely under the guise of content moderation. As Gillespie argues, social media platforms shape public discourse as much as any broadcaster, yet historically they have been subject to far fewer regulatory obligations.

In recent years, policy experts and international organisations have proposed diverse governance frameworks for digital platforms. For example, Nicolas Suzor (2019) advocates for a model of digital constitutionalism. This approach calls for human rights principles such as freedom of expression, privacy and due process to be embedded directly into the design and governance of online platforms. By linking platform rule-making to constitutional regimes, Suzor highlights the need for enforceable safeguards that limit private power and promote democratic legitimacy in both content moderation and algorithmic decision-making.

This rights-based approach is reflected in new regulatory instruments like the EU’s Digital Services Act (European Parliament & Council of the European Union 2022), which institutionalises key principles of responsible platform governance. The Digital Services Act imposes due diligence obligations, risk mitigation duties and transparency requirements on very large online platforms. These rules mandate systemic assessments of algorithmic risks and reinforce the legal rights of users. Such measures exemplify a broader global shift away from reactive, industry-led self-regulation towards proactive and constitutionalised governance mechanisms (Kuczerawy 2022).

Whilst self-regulation was long the dominant model for internet platforms, it is increasingly criticised for lacking transparency, accountability and democratic legitimacy (Gorwa 2019). Platform-led governance often amounts to ‘regulatory theatre’, a performative display of responsibility that masks the concentration of power in private hands without adequate external oversight (Gorwa 2019; Suzor 2019). David Kaye (2019), the former United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, contends that privatised regulation undermines fundamental rights by removing key decisions about speech visibility from democratic processes. In light of these concerns, scholars and policymakers increasingly promote co-regulation – a hybrid approach in which public authorities provide oversight whilst industry actors take on the practical implementation (Gorwa 2019; Marsden 2011). Co-regulation offers a governance model in which states establish binding legal standards but delegate much of the operational responsibility for enforcement and content moderation to platforms, subject to regulatory monitoring. This approach has been embedded in statutory frameworks such as Germany’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), which requires platforms to swiftly remove unlawful material (Heldt 2019), and Australia’s Online Safety Act 2021, which grants the eSafety Commissioner authority to oversee and enforce compliance (Flew, Martin & Pappalardo 2019). These arrangements signal a move towards joint responsibility in governing online platforms, with the dual aim of rebuilding public trust and reinforcing democratic values in digital environments. The underlying rationale is to combine the flexibility and responsiveness of industry self-regulation with the legitimacy and authority of state oversight, though its effectiveness ultimately hinges on the independence of regulators and the precision of the rules imposed.

Regulatory independence: Theory and tensions

The principle of regulatory independence has long been recognised as a cornerstone of democratic media governance. It refers to the capacity of regulatory authorities to function autonomously, insulated from undue interference by political actors or regulated industries (Thatcher & Stone Sweet 2002). Independent regulators are seen as vital for safeguarding core values such as media pluralism, diversity of viewpoints and freedom of expression (Maggetti 2007; Napoli 2001). In practice, however, true autonomy is difficult to achieve and sustain. Scholars note that ostensibly independent agencies often face subtle and overt pressures that can compromise their neutrality (Puppis 2010; Schulz 1999). These pressures include politically motivated appointments of regulators, financial dependence on government funding or informal lobbying and influence by powerful media corporations.

Manuel Puppis (2010), in a comparative analysis, shows that the degree of regulators’ independence varies widely across countries, but some common features include a clear legal status for the regulatory body, merit-based and fixed-term appointment processes, financial autonomy and robust checks and balances against arbitrary dismissal. Building on this, Chris Hanretty (2010) argues that true de facto independence requires more than just legal safeguards. It demands a robust culture of insulation from partisan politics, a standard that his research suggests is rarely met fully in practice. This finding highlights the persistent tension between the formal institutional design of media regulators and the informal political pressures that often shape their day-to-day operations. In many jurisdictions, the persistence of sectoral silos – where print, broadcast, telecommunications and digital media are governed by separate regulators – results in regulatory incoherence and oversight gaps, particularly as content circulates seamlessly across formats (Iosifidis 2011; Napoli 2019; eds. Tambini, Leonardi & Marsden 2008). Because of these gaps, many scholars and policymakers argue for bringing different media regulators together into a single authority. The idea is that an integrated regulator could improve consistency, reduce overlap and make regulation more effective (Iosifidis 2011). In contrast, without safeguards, convergence can backfire by concentrating excessive control in one authority and potentially amplifying executive influence (eds. Mansell & Raboy 2011; Price 2002).

In the digital era, regulators face fresh challenges to both their independence and effectiveness. The lack of transparency in platform algorithms, combined with the massive scale of online content, has made many traditional regulatory approaches insufficient (Flew et al. 2019; Gorwa 2019; Helberger 2020). Scholars like Chris Marsden (2020) advocate for adaptive, risk-based regulatory approaches that are iterative and informed by technical expertise, enabling regulators to respond to fast-changing technologies. In recent years, the discussion on regulatory independence has expanded to include the idea of participatory independence, the notion that regulators must not only be free from external pressures but actively engage with stakeholders and the public to ensure legitimacy and accountability (Broughton Micova & De Streel 2017). This concept implies that regulators should maintain structural independence from government and industry whilst being accountable to the public and open to input from civil society (Flew 2021). In other words, a modern regulator must not only be free from undue influence, but also actively engage with diverse stakeholders and the public interest. This evolving view suggests that effective media regulation in the digital era depends on equipping regulators with legal authority, institutional capacity and legitimacy.

Taken together, these theoretical currents including public interest obligations, platform responsibility and regulatory independence do not exist in isolation. Instead, they are best understood as configurations that vary systematically across different democratic contexts. Flew (2021) identifies a regulatory spectrum that ranges from the market-driven, First Amendment-oriented model of the US, where platform self-regulation dominates, to the state-controlled approaches of authoritarian regimes, where content oversight serves governmental rather than democratic ends.

Between these two poles, European democracies have pioneered a ‘third way’. This approach combines binding platform obligations with independent oversight, multi-stakeholder participation and constitutional safeguards for expression. This model is increasingly reflected in instruments such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act. Australia occupies a comparable intermediate position by blending statutory authority with co-regulatory industry mechanisms under an independent commissioner.

The five jurisdictions examined in this study, which include India, the US, the UK, the EU and Australia, represent distinct positions along this spectrum. Each embodies a different institutional logic for balancing state oversight with democratic freedoms. However, understanding where India currently sits on this spectrum requires more than a snapshot of its present regulatory framework. It demands an examination of the historical and institutional forces that have cumulatively shaped its regulatory trajectory. These factors, such as colonial legacies, post-independence choices and the pressures of digital convergence, continue to constrain reform even as the pace of technological change accelerates. The section that follows traces this trajectory, after which the comparative analysis situates India’s current framework systematically against global democratic practice across six key variables.

Tracing India’s regulatory evolution from analogue broadcasting to digital media governance

Understanding the historical path of media regulation in India is vital for placing today’s policy debates in context. This evolution has unfolded through three overlapping periods. It began with a colonial and post-independence era defined by state monopolies and censorship. This shifted in the 1990s into a liberalisation phase, where different types of media expanded rapidly under a fragmented oversight system. More recently, India has entered a stage of digital convergence, marked by a push to harmonise rules across various platforms. Throughout these shifts, the same core tensions remain: How to design oversight, the proper limits of state authority and whether there is room for true multi-stakeholder participation.

Colonial legacies and the post-independence regulatory imprint

The roots of India’s regulatory tradition lie in the colonial era, when the press was often treated as a force to be policed rather than a pillar of democracy (Jeffrey 2000). British rule normalised the practice of pre-censorship and used restrictive statutes to consolidate state power over the media. This history left a lasting ‘regulatory reflex’ that prioritises the restriction of expression over its protection (Rathi & Chaudhary 2024). Whilst the 1950 Constitution guaranteed free speech under Article 19(1)(a), it also allowed for ‘reasonable restrictions’ under Article 19(2). This created a model of qualified liberty rather than an absolute right (Austin 1999; Basu 2012). Although early Supreme Court rulings pushed back against censorship, the First Amendment in 1951 broadened the state’s power to restrict speech. As a result, Indian media law became a perpetual balancing act between democratic promises and the state’s demand for security and order.

For decades after independence, the government maintained a tight grip on broadcasting. The Press Council of India, established in 1978, lacked enforcement power, whilst radio and television remained state monopolies under All India Radio and Doordarshan. It was not until the 1990s that private broadcasters were finally allowed entry (Jeffrey 2000; Mehta 2008). This long history of state control directly explains the low scores for Regulatory Independence and User Rights in this study’s comparative matrix; the foundational legal structures were simply not built to be independent.

Liberalisation, convergence and regulatory fragmentation (1990s–2020)

The spread of satellite television and the internet in the early 1990s eroded the state’s exclusive broadcasting control. Private satellite channels quickly attracted large audiences, and by the mid-1990s, the government had formally permitted cable and satellite broadcasting, without establishing a comprehensive regulatory structure (Mehta 2008). The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act (1995) introduced basic registration rules and content codes, but enforcement remained inconsistent and dependent on executive authorities, as no independent broadcasting regulator was created (Thakurta 2011).

A landmark shift occurred with the Supreme Court’s 1995 ruling in Ministry of I&B vs. Cricket Association of Bengal. The court famously declared that airwaves were public property and explicitly called for an independent regulatory body. However, political fragmentation stalled any unified legislative response. Instead of creating a new authority, the government simply extended the powers of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) (2004), which was originally a telecommunications regulator, to cover broadcasting distribution in the early 2000s. This created a dual structure where TRAI (2004) managed technical and economic aspects whilst the Ministry retained its grip on content. This split arrangement has been widely criticised by scholars such as Mehta (2008) for its inherent ineffectiveness. This liberalisation-era fragmentation is exactly why India receives a low governance model score in the comparative matrix, as it reflects a legacy of siloed structures that persist today.

Digital governance eventually found its primary anchor in the Information Technology Act (2000). Following significant amendments in 2008, this Act introduced two critical pillars: (1) Section 69A, which authorises content blocking, and (2) Section 79, which established the ‘safe harbour’ framework for intermediaries. By 2021, the IT Rules expanded this reach to include digital news and streaming platforms through a three-tier complaints mechanism. The more recent Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill (2023) seeks to consolidate traditional broadcasting and OTT platforms under a single regime. However, critics from the Internet Freedom Foundation (2024) and Freedom House (2021) point out that it largely replicates the expansive government control found in the IT Rules, posing a threat to freedom of expression. By 2020, Indian regulation had become a disjointed patchwork spanning broadcast, cable, digital news and social media, with each governed by distinct instruments (Obhan & Joshi 2024). This institutional incoherence, clashing with the reality of digital convergence, has set the stage for current reform efforts. More importantly, it directly drives India’s poor standing in Enforcement and Transparency and Accountability, where a lack of systemic unity has consistently undermined both regulatory rigour and public oversight.

Research methods and design

This study adopts a Qualitative Comparative Policy Analysis (QCPA) framework to interrogate the regulatory landscapes of India, the US, the UK, the EU and Australia. By evaluating these five jurisdictions against a unified set of analytical variables, the research leverages QCPA’s unique capacity to harmonise cross-case systemic rigour with the granular contextual sensitivity. Rather than treating jurisdictions as discrete statistical data points, this framework views each case as a nuanced configuration of institutional and legal trajectories, aligning with Napoli’s (2001) assertion that media governance research must engage with the internal institutional logic of systems rather than viewing policy outputs as isolated dependent variables.

The selection of these five cases adheres to the established epistemic logic of small-N comparative inquiry. Lijphart (1971) argues that the comparative method should be viewed as a standalone analytical strategy. It is not merely a statistical substitute. Instead, it offers a way to achieve meaningful depth when a researcher is working within a circumscribed universe of cases. Building on this, George and Bennett (2005) demonstrate that small-N designs are uniquely equipped to trace causal mechanisms and observe how outcomes emerge from complex institutional interactions. Consequently, these jurisdictions represent a purposive, rather than arbitrary, sample of the most analytically distinct environments relevant to the research question. This comparative scope is further operationalised through Flew’s (2021) triad of regulatory philosophy, institutional design and enforcement culture. By selecting cases that maintain a democratic baseline whilst exhibiting significant regulatory divergence, this study directly addresses the principal axes of variation in modern digital media governance.

Case selection

The four comparator jurisdictions were chosen because they are mature democracies with high scores in the Freedom in the World index (Freedom House 2026) and a longstanding commitment to the rule of law. This design follows Lijphart’s (1971) ‘most-similar-systems’ logic by establishing a shared baseline across all cases. By doing this, we can ensure that any differences we find are actually the result of specific regulatory decisions, not just a byproduct of foundational institutional gaps. The inclusion of the EU as a supranational case is also vital. Since EU directives essentially dictate how member states build their own frameworks, the Union acts as a powerful proxy for Continental European governance as a whole. Taken together, these five cases offer a rich variety of contrasts. They cover different legal traditions, like common law and civil law and various government structures, ranging from federal and unitary to transnational. This diversity in media market scales creates an analytically sound spectrum that is perfect for situating the unique challenges facing India.

It is important to acknowledge that the selected comparators, which include the US, the UK, the EU and Australia, are broadly situated within the Global North. In contrast, India occupies a distinct developmental, political and economic context more commonly associated with the Global South. This asymmetry warrants an explicit methodological justification. The selection of these jurisdictions was not based on contextual similarity but on deliberate aspirational benchmarking. This is a recognised approach in comparative policy analysis where jurisdictions with advanced regulatory frameworks serve as reference points to identify gaps and reform pathways in the country under study (Dolowitz & Marsh 2000). The research questions guiding this study are specifically oriented towards evaluating India’s regulatory design against established democratic best practices. This includes investigating whether India’s Draft Bill reflects structural weaknesses and whether international frameworks offer more nuanced democratic models. Such a purpose necessitates selecting jurisdictions that exemplify these practices rather than those that share India’s specific developmental constraints. Selecting only regional or similarly positioned comparators, such as Brazil, Indonesia or South Africa, would be valuable for a different research goal. However, it would not serve the benchmarking objective that this study explicitly pursues.

Variables

Each jurisdiction is evaluated across six variables central to digital broadcasting governance:

1. Governance model – the overall regulatory architecture, including whether oversight is converged or fragmented and whether the framework is state-led, co-regulatory, self-regulatory or hybrid.

2. Regulatory independence – the degree to which regulatory bodies operate free from governmental or industry influence, assessed through legal autonomy, appointment mechanisms and formal protections against political interference.

3. Content moderation approach – how content standards are set and enforced, including the balance between platform-led and government-mandated moderation and the availability of due process mechanisms.

4. User rights – protections for end-users and content creators, encompassing freedom of expression guarantees, rights of appeal, data privacy protections and structural pluralism measures.

5. Enforcement – the mechanisms and practical rigour of regulatory compliance, including available sanctions, consistency of enforcement action and institutional capacity.

6. Transparency and accountability – the openness of regulatory processes, including requirements to publish decisions and rationales, availability of parliamentary or judicial oversight and accessibility of rule-making to public scrutiny.

The six variables employed in this study were derived inductively from the theoretical frameworks reviewed in the preceding section. Each corresponds to a dimension of democratic media governance identified as analytically significant within the comparative regulatory literature.

The governance model was selected as a primary variable following Flew (2021) and Freedman (2008). Their work identifies the structural design of regulatory frameworks, particularly the degree of convergence and institutional coherence, as a foundational determinant of effectiveness in digital environments. Regulatory independence was drawn from Puppis (2010), Maggetti (2007) and Thatcher and Stone Sweet (2002), who collectively establish institutional autonomy from political and commercial interference as a cornerstone of legitimate media governance.

Content moderation approach reflects the platform responsibility literature, particularly the work of Gillespie (2018), Gorwa (2019) and Marsden (2011). These scholars identify the mechanisms and philosophies of content oversight as central to evaluating how regulatory frameworks balance harm prevention with freedom of expression. Similarly, user rights as a variable are grounded in Napoli (2001, 2019), Suzor (2019) and Kaye (2019). Their research foregrounds the protection of individual liberties, including expressive freedoms, due process and redress mechanisms, as a democratic accountability standard for media regulation.

Enforcement structure follows from Puppis (2010) and Flew (2021), who identify the consistency, impartiality and proportionality of regulatory implementation as indicators of governance quality. They argue these factors are analytically distinct from the formal design of regulatory frameworks. Finally, transparency and accountability were selected in response to the growing scholarly consensus reflected in Broughton Micova and De Streel (2017) and Gorwa (2019). They suggest that participatory independence, defined as the openness of regulatory processes to public scrutiny and stakeholder engagement, is an essential and increasingly recognised dimension of democratic media governance in the digital era.

Together, these six variables constitute a theoretically grounded analytical framework. This structure enables a systematic cross-case comparison whilst remaining sensitive to the institutional and normative specificities of each jurisdiction.

Scoring transparency

Each jurisdiction is rated on a 1–5 scale for every variable, where five reflects strong alignment with democratic good-governance principles and one signals a meaningful shortfall. Full scoring criteria are detailed in the Online Appendix 1. These scores are best understood as structured interpretation rather than objective measurement. The ratings rest on verifiable evidence, including statutory provisions, documented institutional practices, enforcement records and expert assessments drawn from the literature, but translating that evidence into a comparative score inevitably involves analytical judgement. Each rating is therefore accompanied by an explicit account of the reasoning behind it, so that the basis for assessment remains open to scrutiny. This is consistent with how QCPA treats scores: Not as data points for statistical processing, but as heuristic tools that make systematic cross-case comparison possible without discarding the institutional context that gives them their meaning.

A score of five indicates substantial alignment with best practice on a given dimension. A score of one reflects a significant gap against democratic governance norms. Scores in between capture partial or uneven performance across the relevant indicators. Where an assessment is genuinely contested, or where recent legal developments introduce ambiguity, this is acknowledged directly in the discussion rather than absorbed into a single numerical figure.

The scores are aggregated into a comparative matrix and visualised through a heatmap, offering an overview of how each jurisdiction performs across all six dimensions. The matrix is not intended as a definitive ranking. It functions instead as an analytical starting point, one that surfaces patterns and anomalies worth examining more closely in the qualitative discussion that follows.

Data sources

The analysis is constructed from a foundation of core constitutional and legislative texts. This involves a detailed examination of India’s Information Technology Act and the proposed Broadcasting Services Bill, alongside international counterparts such as the UK’s Communications Act 2003 and Online Safety Act 2023. The scope also encompasses the EU’s Digital Services Act, the US Communications Act and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) framework and Australia’s Broadcasting Services and Online Safety Acts. To ensure a balanced perspective, these primary legal documents are weighed against secondary academic literature, official reports from regulatory bodies like Ofcom and the ACMA (2021) and critical assessments from civil society. All sources are cross-verified where possible, with any contested findings explicitly flagged with the necessary caveats.

By grounding this work in the comparative logic established by Lijphart (1971) and George and Bennett (2005), the study maintains a rigorous systematic approach. At the same time, applying the institutionalist frameworks of Napoli (2001) and Flew (2021) ensures the analysis remains sensitive to the unique local context of each case. The resulting matrix and heatmap map India’s standing across various governance dimensions. This is followed by a qualitative discussion that explores the underlying reasoning behind these scores. This stage of the research identifies successful regulatory practices from other jurisdictions and evaluates their potential for meaningful adaptation within the Indian landscape.

Ethical considerations

This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

Results

Comparative analysis of global approaches to digital broadcasting and platform regulation

To contextualise the evolving framework in India, this analysis examines how four other jurisdictions, which include the UK, the EU, the US and Australia, have approached the regulation of digital era broadcasting and online platforms. Each of these regions offers a distinct governance model and provides valuable lessons in balancing platform accountability with individual freedoms.

The comparison focuses on several key dimensions, starting with the overall governance model, which ranges from self-regulation and co-regulation to state-led oversight. Other critical variables include the independence of regulatory bodies, specific approaches to content moderation and platform obligations, and the robustness of user rights and redressal mechanisms. The study further evaluates enforcement structures, transparency and accountability measures, and the overall scope of coverage. Table 1 provides a high-level comparative matrix of these variables across the five jurisdictions. This is followed by a qualitative discussion of each jurisdiction’s framework, highlighting their respective strengths and weaknesses. Figure 1 presents this data as a comparative regulatory heatmap for visual reference.

FIGURE 1: Comparative regulatory heatmap.

Each row represents one of the six analytical variables, and each column represents a jurisdiction. Cells shaded in darker green tones indicate higher scores reflecting stronger alignment with democratic governance principles, whilst cells in red or yellow tones indicate lower scores reflecting meaningful shortfalls against those principles. India’s column displays a consistently yellow and red shades across nearly all dimensions, underscoring its relative weaknesses in regulatory independence, transparency and accountability, and stakeholder engagement when benchmarked against the mature democracies examined in this study. This pattern visually supports H1 by illustrating the structural gap between India’s current framework and global democratic practice. It simultaneously provides the visual foundation for the variable-by-variable discussion that follows, in which the reasoning behind each score is examined in detail. Readers are directed to the Online Appendix 1 for the full scoring criteria, which define the indicators and evidentiary basis for each score level across all six variables and all five jurisdictions.

Discussion

Cross-jurisdictional insights and implications

Comparing these jurisdictions highlights divergent approaches to a universal challenge: How to govern digital platforms in a manner that protects society whilst upholding democratic values. The comparative matrix and heatmap illustrate a spectrum. On the one end is the state-centric model evident in India’s Draft Bill, which leans heavily on government control. On the other is the market-centric model of the US, which relies on laissez-faire principles and litigation immunity. The UK, the EU and Australia occupy intermediate positions that blend regulatory oversight with industry responsibility. Four recurring themes emerge from this analysis, each carrying direct implications for India’s reform path.

The shift towards co-regulation

The first consistent pattern is the shift towards co-regulation over pure self-regulation. In the UK, EU and Australia, the dominant trend involves frameworks where industry actors provide technical expertise whilst independent regulators ensure accountability. Whilst India’s Draft Bill uses the language of co-regulation, its proposed self-regulatory bodies lack genuine autonomy. They function more as extensions of ministerial power than as independent, industry-led mechanisms. In contrast, Germany’s Network Enforcement Act and Australia’s Online Safety Act demonstrate an authentic co-regulatory model. In these systems, legally binding obligations are discharged through industry mechanisms but remain under the oversight of independent authorities. A more credible path for India would involve authorising independent bodies to draft operational standards, subject to the supervision of an autonomous regulator rather than direct ministerial direction.

Regulatory independence and institutional design

The second theme emphasises that oversight must remain at arm’s length from political control. The UK’s Ofcom and Australia’s eSafety Commissioner operate with statutory independence, which bolsters public trust that regulations will not be used for partisan interests. The European Union has even embedded this requirement into its directives, making independence a legally enforceable standard. India’s proposed Content Evaluation Council diverges sharply from this global norm, as its Ministry-controlled structure risks undermining institutional credibility. To secure legitimacy, India would benefit from a statutory commission accountable to Parliament rather than the executive. Such a body could coordinate with other regulators, much like the UK’s Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum, providing the checks and balances currently missing from the Draft Bill.

Approaches to content moderation

The third theme concerns the philosophy of content moderation. Regulation in the UK and EU increasingly focuses on systemic oversight. This requires platforms to implement robust processes for risk assessment and complaint handling without the government acting as a direct arbiter of online speech. This process-based approach allows for adaptability as social norms evolve. However, India’s Draft Bill remains rooted in a content-specific model. By extending broadcast Programme Codes to digital services and granting broad powers to block material, the Bill aligns more closely with censorship than with modern accountability. The EU’s Digital Services Act offers a forward-looking template by requiring platforms to align community guidelines with statutory principles and publish regular transparency reports. Shifting to this outcome-oriented model would align India more closely with the public relevance standard defined by Helberger (2020).

User rights and transparency

The final theme addresses user rights and transparency, two areas where India’s comparative deficit is most significant. The EU’s Digital Services Act establishes formal rights of appeal against content decisions, and Australia provides external complaint mechanisms through the eSafety Commissioner. By comparison, India’s Draft Bill offers little structured recourse for individuals, who must rely on internal platform mechanisms or costly court petitions. Strengthening the user’s position would require embedding notice-and-appeal rights in legislation and establishing an independent ombudsman.

On transparency, global standards are converging. The EU mandates researcher access to platform data, whilst the UK and Australia require extensive annual compliance reporting. These practices reflect a shared understanding that transparency is the foundation of accountability. India’s Draft Bill is notably silent here, as it neither requires platforms to publish reports nor obligates regulators to disclose their own decision-making logic. Introducing statutory duties for platforms and regulators to publish moderation metrics, modelled on the obligations of Ofcom and EU regulators, would be a meaningful step towards closing this democratic gap.

Limitations and directions for future research

Several limitations of this study warrant acknowledgement. Firstly, the comparative framework benchmarks India exclusively against Global North jurisdictions. This reflects a deliberate methodological choice oriented towards democratic best practice rather than developmental similarity. Whilst this serves the study’s aspirational benchmarking purpose, it does not fully account for reform pathways that may be more sensitive to India’s postcolonial and developmental context. Future comparative research could productively examine India alongside Global South democracies that have made significant strides in digital communications regulation. Brazil’s Marco Civil da internet (2014) and South Africa’s emerging online safety framework, which is rooted in the Cybercrimes Act (2020) and the Film and Publications Amendment Act (2019) are particularly instructive cases in this regard. Such a shift would offer a complementary perspective on regulatory reform that is more directly attuned to shared developmental constraints.

Secondly, the scoring matrix represents the authors’ structured analytical judgement and carries an inherent level of interpretive subjectivity. Although these scores were grounded in legal texts, institutional reports and academic literature, and were triangulated across multiple source types, the absence of formal intercoder reliability testing is acknowledged as a constraint. The reasoning behind each rating is made explicit in the variable-by-variable discussion to mitigate this. However, future research could address this limitation through collaborative coding protocols. Another option would be to apply established third-party indices as external validation benchmarks alongside the authors’ own assessments. Specifically, the Freedom in the World media freedom indicators (Freedom House 2026) or the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) media indices (V-Dem Institute 2026) could serve as robust comparative data points.

Thirdly, the study is necessarily bounded by the regulatory landscape as it stood at the time of writing. Digital media governance is a fast-moving field. For instance, the Draft Broadcasting Services Bill remains subject to revision, the EU’s Digital Services Act is still in its early enforcement phase, and Australia’s online safety framework continues to evolve through regulatory practice. Longitudinal research tracking how these frameworks develop in implementation, rather than in legislative design alone, would offer a valuable complement to the design-focused analysis presented here. Such studies could reveal whether the formal institutional structures identified in this research translate into actual regulatory rigour over time.

Conclusion

Regulatory continuity and the democratic deficit

The comparative analysis presented in this study leads to a conclusion that is at once diagnostic and cautionary. India’s Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill of 2023 does not represent a departure from the regulatory tradition it ostensibly seeks to replace; instead, it reproduces it. Across all six analytical dimensions examined, which include governance model, regulatory independence, content moderation, user rights, enforcement and transparency, the Draft Bill reflects a specific foundational logic. This logic has characterised Indian media regulation since the colonial era and is defined by authority concentrated in the executive, oversight designed to constrain rather than empower, and institutional design that prioritises state discretion over democratic accountability. The fact that this pattern persists in a bill explicitly framed as modernisation is not merely a technical shortcoming. It is a structural choice with significant implications for democratic governance in an era defined by algorithmically mediated public discourse.

What the cross-jurisdictional evidence makes clear is that this choice is not inevitable. The UK, the EU and Australia have each demonstrated through different institutional paths that robust platform accountability and genuine regulatory independence are not competing objectives. The EU’s Digital Services Act shows that systemic, process-based regulation is both legally coherent and democratically legitimate. This is particularly true when it is grounded in algorithmic transparency and user rights rather than content prescription. Similarly, Australia’s eSafety framework demonstrates that co-regulation can combine statutory authority with industry flexibility without collapsing into ministerial control, provided it is genuinely structured rather than merely claimed. These are not merely aspirational models; they are operational frameworks whose design principles are directly transferable to the Indian context with appropriate adaptation.

The deeper insight this study surfaces is theoretical as much as it is comparative. The persistent gap between India’s regulatory ambition and its institutional design reflects what might be understood as a democratic imagination deficit. This is a failure not of legislative capacity but of regulatory vision. India’s frameworks have consistently imagined the regulator as an instrument of the state rather than as a guardian of the public sphere. Recalibrating that imagination towards a conception of regulation as a participatory, transparent and rights-anchored enterprise is the prerequisite for any reform that aspires to be genuinely transformative. Helberger’s concept of public relevance, Suzor’s digital constitutionalism and the participatory independence articulated by Broughton Micova and De Streel together suggest that the theoretical resources for such a recalibration already exist. What remains is the institutional and political will to apply them.

India currently stands at a regulatory inflection point. The Draft Bill, in its current form, risks foreclosing that opportunity by locking in executive dominance at precisely the moment when democratic governance of digital media demands the opposite. Whether the revision process that follows produces genuine structural reform or simply another iteration of regulatory continuity will be a revealing test. Ultimately, it will measure India’s democratic commitments in the digital age.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express sincere gratitude to Dr. Indrajeet Chatterjee for his valuable feedback and encouragement during the preparation of this manuscript. The authors also extend appreciation to colleagues and peers who provided insightful comments and discussions that enriched the conceptual framing of this study. No other individual contributed in a way that meets the authorship criteria. All acknowledged individuals have consented to being named.

The authors; Anubhav Chakraborty and Anil Philip; declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

Anubhav Chakraborty: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Resources, Software validation, Writing – original draft and Writing – review & editing. Anil Philip: Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration and Visualisation. All authors reviewed the article, contributed to the discussion of results, approved the final version for submission and publication and take responsibility for the integrity of its findings.

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.

References