Brand governance in the platform economy: From political to regulatory recognition

This article reconceptualises corporate advocacy as brand governance, a techno-normative promotional practice that regulates the conditions of political visibility within networked publics. Drawing on a sociosemiotic analysis of global advocacy campaigns (2017–2022), the analysis identifies three strategies, Visionary (“Feeling the Other”), Sensitive (“Feeling for Others”) and Reflexive (“Feeling with Others”), each operating through distinct affective and narrative logics. The argument advances a distinction between political and regulatory recognition. Political recognition acknowledges claims in their structural and collective dimension; regulatory recognition extends legitimacy only to claims aligned with the promotional regime’s affective and reputational logic. The evidence suggests that brand governance operates predominantly in this regulatory mode, producing a conditional visibility that privileges individualised emotional appeals over structural political demands. This study focuses on US and Western European promotional cultures; comparative research across other regions remains a necessary next step.