Who will govern the metaverse? Examining governance initiatives for extended reality (XR) technologies

Abstract

It is increasingly common to see policymakers, industry and regulators calling for governance of the ‘metaverse’ – often envisioned as a technological stack supported by extended reality (XR) technology. This article reports on a content analysis of calls to govern XR, published between March 2020 and May 2023 ( n = 181), aiming to understand who is calling for XR governance, what is being governed and why. Findings reveal that XR governance was advanced by government, civil society and industrial stakeholders, and was scoped around four major issues (‘privacy’, ‘safety, equity and inclusion’, ‘competition’, and ‘commercialisation’). Governance solutions to emerging XR technologies included a reliance on currently existing laws and regulations, and predominantly, a more anticipatory set of approaches (largely scoped around industrial self-governance, education and best practice) focusing on the media-specific harms and affordances of XR.