Platform governance and public contestation in X: Media and user responses to Meta’s content moderation shift in Spain, the United States and Turkey

Background Scholarship on digital and platform governance distinguishes different regulatory models, including a deregulatory approach in the United States centred on free speech concerns, a multistakeholder model in the European Union, and patterns often described as digital authoritarianism in Turkey. In this context, this study examines media reactions on platform X to Meta’s decision to replace fact-checking certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) with a community-notes model and analyses how leading media outlets and users in the United States, Spain, and Turkey responded to news posts reporting this change in content moderation policy. Methods The methodology combines quantitative indicators of engagement, lexical analysis, qualitative coding of tone and themes, extraction and examination of user replies and continuous polarity modelling. The dataset includes posts from major news organisations and 1,052 user replies. Results The findings show cross-country variation in media framing and audience engagement. Media outlets in the United States and Spain produced posts combining neutral and critical tones and displayed diverse thematic patterns, while Turkish outlets focused mainly on descriptive reporting. User replies in the United States and Spain frequently introduced interpretative or critical elements, whereas replies in Turkey remained largely informational. Polarity modelling indicates that user responses are more strongly associated with the media outlet they address than with national context. Conclusions Media outlet framing emerges as a key mediating mechanism linking platform policy changes and audience responses across different governance contexts.