Lying in politics is nothing new. And while state and political actors have always enjoyed an outsized influence on public discourse, the digital age provides an abundance of new tools for these actors to magnify their voices in unprecedented ways. Across the globe, these actors are leveraging the advantages of social media to disseminate disinformation for the purpose of improperly manipulating public opinion. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Category: Government and Policy (Page 1 of 35)
The UK government has promised that its new app, expected to launch in late 2022, will be a one-stop shop, simplifying access to a wide range of government services. But issues of surveillance and access are just some of the questions yet to be addressed. Continue reading
It went almost unnoticed in the Queen’s Speech earlier this year when she proclaimed that ‘legislation will be introduced to counter hostile activity by foreign states’. Two days later the government announced a Home Office consultation on its legislative proposals which will run until 22 July 2021. Continue reading
The criminalisation of drill music by the Metropolitan Police denies artists and producers of their right to freedom of expression. This article situates this genre-specific censorship in its racial context, considers the Article 10 European Convention on Human Rights implications, and summarises what other European jurisdictions have done when faced with violent lyrics. Continue reading
On 15 December 2020, the Government published its full response to the Online Harms White Paper, confirming that the Online Harms Bill will establish a new statutory duty of care which is intended to make online companies take responsibility for the safety of their users. Continue reading
The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clearer than ever that we are at risk of losing control of our economies. Our institutions have increasingly struggled to meet the challenges of economic development before the crisis, and yet throughout the pandemic we’ve seen surging stock market valuations of tech giants — including staggering CEO salaries — the inability of anti-trust regulators, particularly in the United States, to effectively regulate markets and the rise of China’s tech companies. Continue reading
Ridiculously low ceilings on administrative fines hindered the effectiveness of EU data protection law for over twenty years. US tech giants may have seen these fines as a cost of doing business. Now, over two years after the commencement of the European Union’s widely heralded General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the anticipated billion-euro sanctions of EU Data Protection Authorities, or ‘DPAs’, which were to have changed the paradigm, have yet to be issued. Continue reading
The Prime Minister’s chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, has long been a sworn enemy of the BBC. In 2004, when he was director of the New Frontiers Foundation, he called for “the end of the BBC in its current form” and argued that the “privileged closed world of the BBC needs to be turned upside down and its very existence should be the subject of a very intense and well-funded campaign’”. Continue reading
Online political advertising has seen an unprecedented amount of attention in the run up to recent elections as online campaigning, often via social media, becomes an increasingly significant part of political parties’ strategies. Concerns over how precisely ads are targeted at specific categories of voters are now common around the world, and various governments have been looking at how to bring regulation of online political advertising in line with regulation in the offline world. Here, University of Amsterdam researchers Carolina Menezes-Cwajg, Paddy Leerssen and Jef Ausloos provide insight into the findings of a new report which maps the efforts to improve transparency in targeted political advertising in a range of countries.
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The UK is ‘clearly a target for Russia’s disinformation campaigns,’ according to a new report. Protecting our democratic discourse from a hostile state is the role of the intelligence agencies. Integral to that process are the social media platforms, who are private actors. What role should platforms have in a national security context? LSE Visiting Fellow Monica Horten discusses the findings of the Russia report from the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, released on 21 July, which exposes some of the issues. Continue reading
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