Governing anxiety-oriented content: A platform ethical co-governance framework

Abstract

Digital platforms increasingly organise social anxiety as an attention resource by linking emotionally charged narratives to repeated engagement and monetisable affordances. This conceptual study explains how anxiety-oriented content becomes a platform-ethics problem and develops a multi-actor governance framework. It adopts a theory-building design supported by an integrative literature synthesis. Relevant scholarship on social media anxiety, platformisation, algorithmic governance, digital advertising, corporate digital responsibility, and user vulnerability was identified through structured database and keyword searches, supplemented by backward and forward citation tracing. The literature was compared thematically to identify recurring mechanisms, responsibility gaps, and governance responses. The analysis identifies four interconnected forms of platform ethical disorder: algorithmic amplification, emotional manipulation, commercial inducement, and responsibility displacement. It then specifies four corresponding governance transformations: platforms must move from traffic maximisation to responsibility-bearing, creators from emotional stimulation to value accountability, regulators from ex-post punishment to process-oriented oversight, and users from passive exposure to rights-based participation. The study contributes by reframing anxiety-oriented content as a structural linkage among affective vulnerability, platform stickiness, and commercial conversion rather than as a purely psychological outcome or isolated content violation. Practically, the framework supports recommendation-risk assessment, prominent commercial disclosure, creator accountability standards, stronger user controls, and closed-loop coordination among platforms, creators, regulators, and users.