The “Jovana Karanović Impact Award” recognises research that combines scholarly excellence with societal relevance. Philipp’s research provides the first empirical evidence on a leading proposal for digital platform regulation.
How can regulators restore user choice on dominant social media platforms? Interoperability is a leading policy proposal, particularly under the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act. Yet, there is remarkably little empirical evidence on whether it delivers on its promises.
Philipp Riederle’s award-winning paper provides such evidence by studying the real-world interoperable social network Mastodon. The finding: interoperability can help restore user choice, but only if regulators get the specifics right. The paper identifies several social media-specific considerations that matter for interoperability to succeed.
For this research, Philipp Riederled received the inaugural “Jovana Karanović Impact Award”. It recognises research that combines scholarly excellence with societal relevance. The award honours the legacy of Jovana Karanović, founder of Reshaping Work, who passed away unexpectedly in December 2025. It was presented by the award committee of Carmelo Cennamo, Panos Constantinides, and Joost Rietveld at the EU-DPRN Conference 2026, which took place at Aalto University this year.
- Paper: https://research.riederle.net/pub/26musq/
- Award: https://www.eudprn.com/the-jovana-karanovic-impact-award/
- Conference: https://www.eudprn.com
- Jovana’s Legacy: https://reshapingwork.net/the-legacy-of-jovana-karanovic/