Grand Debate Research Guide

A broad explanation of the various dimensions of the problem of "bad" speech on the internet within the American context.One of the most fiercely debated issues of this era is what to do about "bad" speech--hate speech, disinformation and propaganda campaigns, and incitement of violence--on the internet, and in particular speech on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. In Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of our Democracy, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone have gathered an eminent cast of contributors--including Hillary Clinton, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mark Warner, Newt Minow,Tim Wu, Cass Sunstein, Jack Balkin, Emily Bazelon, and others--to explore the various dimensions of this problem in the American context. They stress how difficult it is to develop remedies given that some of these forms of "bad" speech are ordinarily protected by the First Amendment. Bollinger and Stone argue that it is important to remember that the last time we encountered major new communications technology--television and radio--we established a federal agency to provide oversight and to issue regulations to protect and promote "the public interest." Featuring a variety of perspectives from some of America's leading experts on this hotly contested issue, this volume offers new insights for the future of free speech in the social media era.

An eye-opening look at the invisible workers who protect us from seeing humanity's worst on today's commercial internet   Social media on the internet can be a nightmarish place. A primary shield against hateful language, violent videos, and online cruelty uploaded by users is not an algorithm. It is people. Mostly invisible by design, more than 100,000 commercial content moderators evaluate posts on mainstream social media platforms: enforcing internal policies, training artificial intelligence systems, and actively screening and removing offensive material--sometimes thousands of items per day.   Sarah T. Roberts, an award-winning social media scholar, offers the first extensive ethnographic study of the commercial content moderation industry. Based on interviews with workers from Silicon Valley to the Philippines, at boutique firms and at major social media companies, she contextualizes this hidden industry and examines the emotional toll it takes on its workers. This revealing investigation of the people "behind the screen" offers insights into not only the reality of our commercial internet but the future of globalized labor in the digital age.

Global platforms present novel challenges. They are powerful conduits of commerce and global community, and their potential to influence behavior is enormous. Defeating Disinformation explores how to balance free speech and dangerous online content to reduce societal risks of digital platforms. The volume offers an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon insights from different geographies and parallel challenges of managing global phenomena with national policies and regulations. Chapters also examine the responsibility of platforms for their content, which is limited by national laws such as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the US. This balance between national rules and the need for appropriate content moderation threatens to splinter platforms and reduce their utility across the globe. Timely and expansive, Defeating Disinformation develops a global approach to address these tensions while maintaining, and even enhancing, the social contribution of platforms. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Censorship and the loss of free speech is part of a growing anti-democratic movement. This volume documents and evaluates the contemporary phenomenon of censorship in digital spaces as well as in print, visual, and legacy media.

This resource uses evidence-based documentation to examine the veracity of claims and beliefs about the state, nature, and extent of media bias in American news media, including social media, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets. The book provides students and other readers with a clear and accurate understanding of claims of media bias (both conservative and liberal) in the United States by refuting falsehoods, misunderstandings, and exaggerations surrounding this topic - and confirming the validity of other assertions. In addition, this sourcebook examines claims and assertions about media bias in other realms of American life, from popular entertainment to social media platforms. Media Bias: Examining the Facts has been specifically crafted to give readers the tools for a fuller and more accurate understanding of the facts surrounding controversial issues, policies, and laws that occupy center stage in American life and politics. Specific areas of focus in this volume include defining and understanding conscious and unconscious bias; the evolution of the news industry and partisan news sources in the digital age; the ways in which political polarization exacerbates media bias, laws and practices that govern the operations of news media; and clear examples of conservative and liberal bias in such media sectors as cable and broadcast news, radio, newspapers and magazines, talk radio, and online platforms.

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In the book, particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state’s solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media’s content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years.

The book is a modern primer on propaganda--aspects like disinformation, trolls, bots, information influence, psychological operations, information operations, and information warfare. Propaganda: From Disinformation and Influence to Operations and Information Warfare offers a contemporary model for thinking about the subject. The first two decades of the 21st century have brought qualitative and quantitative technological and societal changes, and the subject of information influence needs to be re-ordered. Now is the time. The book explains the origins of the meaning and phenomenon of propaganda--where it came from and how it has changed over the centuries. The book also covers modern methods, including artificial intelligence (AI) and advertising technologies. Legal, political, diplomatic, and military considerations ensure that the material is covered in depth. The book is recommended for security and cybersecurity professionals (both technical and non-technical), government officials, politicians, corporate executives, academics, and students of technical and social sciences. Adepts with an interest in the subject will read it with interest.

From Facebook and YouTube to TikTok and WeChat, this accessible book explores the relationships between public and personal communication on social media to understand their impacts on users' everyday lives.

Most users want their Twitter feed, Facebook page, and YouTube comments to be free of harassment and porn. Whether faced with 'fake news' or livestreamed violence, 'content moderators'--who censor or promote user-posted content--have never been more important. This is especially true when the tools that social media platforms use to curb trolling, ban hate speech, and censor pornography can also silence the speech you need to hear. [The author] provides an overview of current social media practices and explains the underlying rationales for how, when, and why these policies are enforced. In doing so, [the author] highlights that content moderation receives too little public scrutiny even as it is shapes social norms and creates consequences for public discourse, cultural production, and the fabric of society. Based on interviews with content moderators, creators, and consumers, this ... book is ... for anyone who's ever clicked 'like' or 'retweet.'

This open access book is one of the first academic works to comprehensively analyse the dilemma concerning global content governance on social media. To date, no single human rights standard exists across all social media platforms, allowing private companies to set their own rules, values and parameters. On the one hand, this normative autonomy raises serious concerns, primarily around whether companies should be permitted to establish the rules governing free speech online. On the other hand, if social media platforms simply adopted international law standards, they would be compelled to operate a choice on which model to follow, and put in place mechanisms to uphold these general standards. This book examines this topic from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing from the expertise of the authors in law, political science and communication studies. It provides a carefully reconstructed theory of the content governance dilemma, as well as pragmatic solutions for companies and policymakers. In this way, the book not only benefits academics by advancing the debate on content moderation issues, but also informs new policies and regulatory strategies by offering an up-to-date overview of rules and tools for content moderation, as well as an evaluation of their current level of compliance with standards emerged in international human rights law and digital constitutionalism initiatives. Edoardo Celeste is Assistant Professor of Law, Technology and Innovation and Director of the European Master in Law, Data and AI at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland. Nicola Palladino is a Research Fellow under the Human+ Co-Fund Marie Skłodowska-Curie Programme at the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Dennis Redeker is a Postdoctoral Researcher at ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, Germany. Kinfe Yilma is Assistant Professor of Law at the School of Law, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.

This volume offers contextually sensitive insights into influencers' multi-modal communication on a range of platforms. The contributions rework established modes and tools of discourse analysis and pragmatics to shed empirical light on influencer identities and tensions (e.g. doing authenticity vis-à-vis promoting brands).

This book explores the pervasive and globalized trajectory of domestic disinformation. It describes specific operations and general apparatuses of disinformation that are sponsored by the State institutions in several countries around the world, such as governments, political parties, and politicians.