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Social Media, Participation and Freedom of Speech:

Digital blue pencils or Disinformation:

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Prof. Dr. Sofia Ranchordas

University of Groningen

The Netherlands

Forum Juridico, UL, FGV, IDP

April 24, 2019

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Proposal nr. 1:

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Social Media should be recognized as a legitimate form of citizen participation

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Proposal nr. 2:

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Shut down social media to prevent disinformation

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Outline:

  • 1. Social media as a vehicle for democratic participation;

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  • 2. Social media as a vehicle for the distribution of power.

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  • 3. What we should really be talking about.

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  • 4. Conclusion

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1. Social Media, Participation, Democratic Legitimacy

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“It is fully conceivable that one day through ingenious discoveries, every single person, without leaving his apartment, could continuously express his opinions on political questions though an apparatus…”

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“and that all these opinions would be automatically registered by a central office, where one would only need to read them off’

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Carl Schmitt (1928)

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In the beginning…

  • Social media: no mediation, direct engagement and participation;

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  • Citizen participation beyond elections.

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  • Responsive democracy.

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Responsive Democracy

  • Response to problems (ref. Ayres & Braithwaite – responsive regulation);

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  • ‘Ocular democracy’ (Green);

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  • Casting a secret vote vs. Public debate on social media;

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  • Proximity to representatives.

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What changed?

  • Who speaks;

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  • Why one speaks;

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  • How one speaks;

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  • Who controls speech;

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What changed? (II)

  • New forms of speech;

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  • New forms of control: platform contrl with no democratic guarantees.

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  • More citizens can speak, but not all speech matters.

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2. Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and Disinformation

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“Fake News” or…

  • Disinformation: Information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country;

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  • Misinformation: Information that is false but not created with the intention of causing harm;

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  • Mal-information: Information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, social group, organization or country.

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  1. Enhance transparency of online news;

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2. Promote  media and information literacy to counter disinformation;

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3. Develop tools for empowering users and journalists to tackle disinformation and foster a positive engagement with fast-evolving information technologies;

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4. Safeguard the diversity and sustainability of the European news media ecosystem;

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5. Avoid censorship.

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3. What we should be really talking about…

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Platform Power

  • Social Media: Distributed or Democratic Power?

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  • New Forms of Speech.

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  • New Forms of Influence.

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  • How to “Innoculate”/Educate Citizens against it.

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“ It is hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought they are not familiar with…such communication has always been…one of the main sources of progress.”

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John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848)

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Conclusion

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Conclusion (I)

  • Behind every technology is someone pulling its strings;

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  • Technology (read: social media platforms) is not a democratic vehicle of participation, it is a mediator.

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  • Technology mediates a relationship of power between citizens and the State.

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Conclusion (II)

  • Social media: new form of distributed participation, not democratic participation.

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  • Rules for platforms, not for speech;

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  • What to do about disinformation?
    • Educative democracy;
    • Digital democracy;
    • ‘Innoculation against misinformation’

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Social Media, Participation and Freedom of Speech:

Digital blue pencils or Disinformation:

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Prof. Dr. Sofia Ranchordas

University of Groningen

The Netherlands

Forum Juridico, UL, FGV, IDP

April 24, 2019

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Social Media should be recognized as a legitimate form of citizen participation

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Shut down social media to prevent disinformation

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Thank you.

Questions?

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Contact details: Prof. Dr. Sofia Ranchordas

University of Groningen – Faculty of Law

The Netherlands

s.h.ranchordas@rug.nl.

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