The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
The Cambridge Analytica scandal of March 2018 changed the status of Facebook forever. The revelation that a political consultancy had illicitly gained access to the data of millions of Facebook users forced the company to change its approach to privacy, including its rules and algorithms. Continue reading
In recent elections, the legal framework for regulating campaigns has come under considerable strain. The rules were built around a system in which national campaign communications were mainly carried through the broadcast and print media. The last comprehensive reform of election finance law was enacted in 2000. The framework left a number of old problems unresolved, such as the role of big donors. Continue reading
Last week, as French voters went to the polls to choose their new president, the usual 32-hour period of enforced electoral silence fell throughout the Republic. In France, just as in the UK, candidates and their supporters are banned from campaigning, and the media is forbidden from reporting results, or even estimates of results such as opinion polls or exit polls, or from carrying campaigners’ statements. Continue reading
Imagine if on June 23 this year British citizens looking at google.co.uk found the words #VoteIn towards the bottom of the search page. Perhaps they would ignore it and go about their business, or perhaps it would remind them that they had not yet voted and ought to before it was too late. Whatever their views on the EU referendum, such an expression of partisanship may surprise them. Continue reading
On 19 January 2015, the Constitutional Court of South Africa handed down judgment in the case of Democratic Alliance v African National Congress and Another ([2015] ZACC 1), a case concerning text text messages relating to President Jacob Zuma sent to over 1.5 million voters by the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the run up to the 2014 general elections. Continue reading
In his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry last week, Sir John Major put his finger on one of the central difficulties raised by the political role of the British press. When discussing Rupert Murdoch, he said:
‘I think the sheer scale of the influence he is believed to have, whether he exercises it or not, is an unattractive facet in British national life, and it does seem to me an oddity that in a nation which prides itself on one man, one vote, we should have one man who can’t vote with a large collection of newspapers and a large share of the electronic media outlet.’ Continue reading
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