Centre for Digital Governance
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The spread of false information and hate speech has increased with the rise of social media. This paper critically examines this phenomenon and the reactions of governments and major corporations in Europe. Policymakers have turned towards national regulation as a means to manage false information and hate speech. This article looks into the legislative frameworks on the issue in Germany, France, the UK, the Czech Republic, and Italy and compares them. In response to such regulatory pressure, tech companies have been changing aspects of their platforms to deal with this trend, for example through content moderation. We propose tentative alternatives to this current approach towards reinforcing boundaries for freedom of expression.
While the Internet was created without much governmental oversight, states have gradually drawn territorial borders via Internet governance. China stands out as a promoter of such a territorial‐based approach. China's separate Web infrastructure shapes data when information technologies capture traces of human behavior. As a result, area expertise can contribute to the substantive, methodological, and ethical debates surrounding big data. This article discusses how a number of critical questions that have been raised about big data more generally apply to the Chinese context: How does big data change our understanding of China? What are the limitations of big data from China? What is the context in which big data is generated in China? Who has access to big data and who knows the tools? How can big data from China be used in an ethical way? These questions are intended to spark conversations about best practices for collaboration between data scientists and China experts.