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Social Media Platforms and Challenges for Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights

Beatriz Botero Arcila, Rachel Griffin

Brussels: European Parliament, Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs (2023), 151 pp.

"This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the LIBE Committee, examines risks that contemporary social media - focusing in particular on the most widely-used platforms - present for democracy, the rul ... more

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Platform Responses to Misinformation: A Meta-Analysis of Data
Deep Insights

Zurich: International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) (2023), 70 pp.

"This Synthesis Report examines the effectiveness of countermeasures against misinformation on social media platforms, focusing on the two most examined remedies: content labeling and corrective information interventions. A meta-analysis is a research process for synthesizing and aggregating the fin ... more

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Digital Platform Governance and the Challenges for Trust and Safety. Part 3: Possible Regulatory Solutions to Address Concerns with the Platforms

Research ICT Africa; UNESCO (2023), 19 pp.

"Platform problems are linked to the fact that they are not self-governing according to agreed industry standards but mainly ‘solo-governing’ when it comes to content curation and moderation. Reaction to the failure of current platform efforts to regulate content includes the danger of over-regu ... more

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Regulating Disinformation on Twitter and Facebook

Corinne Tan

Griffith Law Review, volume 31, issue 4 (2023), pp. 513-536

"The spread of disinformation in recent years has caused the international community concerns, particularly around its impact on electoral and public health outcomes. When one considers how disinformation can be contained, one often looks to new laws imposing more accountability on prominent social ... more

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Community Stewards and Social Cohesion in Digital Spaces

Search for Common Ground (2023), 27 pp.

"[...] There are 70 million individuals who are administrators of Facebook groups. Many more coordinate groups across other platforms such as WhatsApp, Signal, and others, which are often run on mobile devices - with a global user base of 5.34 billion unique mobile users. Group administrators and mo ... derators act as “community stewards.” They are individuals in charge of reviewing user-generated content to ensure users adhere to rules, regulations, and community standards of social media platforms. They hold tremendous influence over the experience of their users, but they often step into these roles without fully understanding the scope of responsibilities they are taking on. Many community stewards describe their role as a “labor of love,” representing a substantial opportunity to catalyze large-scale, positive social change across societies. Yet, they face many challenges. Stewards cite myriad challenges, risks, rewards, and opportunities they face in managing their online groups and pages. This report focuses on the role of community stewards in promoting healthier relationships in their online and digital groups in conflict-affected and fragile countries. There is growing evidence of the societal impacts stewards are driving through their platforms, such as mobilizing aid during crises, raising awareness on important issues, and fostering solutions to community challenges. Given their unique reach, influence, and trust, community stewards hold great potential to not only mobilize positive social change, but also to foster connection and belonging in a way that positively transforms relationships and disrupts the toxic polarization that divides societies and fuels violence. The potential of community stewards is clear; it is less clear how civil society, the private sector, governments, and others can best support and scale up this potential. Understanding the needs and incentives of community stewards to proactively use their roles for building healthier online (and offline) communities can help build on what works. Understanding the barriers and challenges they face in doing so, will serve as critical entry points for mobilizing the right support to stewards. This report looks to uncover the barriers and opportunities that stewards face in their efforts to build healthier and safer online communities in conflict-affected and fragile places." (Introduction) more

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Digital Platform Governance and the Challenges for Trust and Safety. Part 2: Platform's Own Policies and Practices: What Problems Need Changing?

Research ICT Africa; UNESCO (2023), 7 pp.

"Platform policies lack clarity about the relationship between them, and also about how policies should be applied at global and local levels. How platforms understand and identify harms is insufficiently mapped to human rights standards, and there is a gap in how policy elements should deal with di ... more

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Safety at Stake: How to Save Meta's Trusted Partner Program

Internews (2023), 33 pp.

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Challenges and Perspectives of Hate Speech Research
Deep Insights

Christian Strippel, Sünje Paasch-Colberg, Martin Emmer, Joachim Trebbe (eds.)

Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, Institute for Media and Communication Studies (2023), 482 pp.

"This book is the result of a conference that could not take place. It is a collection of 26 texts that address and discuss the latest developments in international hate speech research from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. This includes case studies from Brazil, Lebanon, Poland, Nigeria, ... more

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AI and automated decision-making in news and media: Key technologies and emerging challenges

Melbourne: ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society; RMIT University (2023), 37 pp.

"Automated systems and processes are a common feature of the news and media environment. This report introduces four key examples: search, recommendation, automated content moderation and curation, and advertising technology (AdTech). We provide a basic explanation of how these systems work at the t ... more

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Platform Problems and Regulatory Solutions: Findings from a Comprehensive Review of Existing Studies and Investigations
Deep Insights

Guy Berger, Alison Gillwald, Elizabeth Orembo, Dominique Diouf, Juan Manual Garcia

Paris: UNESCO; Research ICT Africa (2023), 17 pp.

"The proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on online platforms has serious implications for human rights, trust and safety as per international human rights law and standards. The mutually-reinforcing determinants of the problems are: ‘attention economics’; automated advertising system ... more

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Social Media 4 Peace: Local Lessons for Global Practices

Adeline Hulin, João Brant

Paris: UNESCO (2023), 69 pp.

"The three countries [Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Kenya] provide evidence of online hate speech and disinformation affecting human rights offline. The evidence is not comprehensive yet clear enough to raise serious concerns. Online gender-based violence is also reported as critical in the ... more

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Policy Brief: Ensuring Ethical AI Practices to Counter Disinformation

Federica Urzo, Elisabetta Panico, Salvatore Custureri

MediaFutures; Luiss Data Lab (2023), 15 pp.

"In particular we recommend to strengthen collaboration (platforms should adopt a collaborative approach involving various stakeholders, including governments, civil society organisations, and fact-checkers, to counter the spread and impact of disinformation. This can include sharing information, be ... st practices, and resources to develop effective strategies); enhance transparency (platforms should prioritise transparency by providing clear and comprehensive information on their policies, algorithms, and content moderation processes. Users should have a better understanding of how their data is used, and how algorithms work to prevent the amplification of false and misleading narratives); implement effective content moderation (platforms need to allocate sufficient resources to effectively monitor and moderate harmful content. This includes investing in advanced AI systems and human moderation teams to detect and remove disinformation in a timely manner. Transparent and consistent guidelines should be in place to ensure fairness and accountability in content moderation decisions); promote fact-based information (platforms should prioritise the promotion of fact-based information from reliable sources. This can be done by partnering with credible news organizations and fact-checkers to provide accurate information and combat false narratives. Advertising promoting climate change denial or other forms of misinformation should be prevented); improve the access to data for researchers (platforms should make efforts to provide access to data for independent researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of their policies and initiatives in countering disinformation. This will enable better analysis and understanding of the impact of disinformation and the effectiveness of countermeasures); comply with regulatory frameworks (platforms should fully comply with regulatory frameworks, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) or other relevant International, EU and National laws and regulations, that provide for obligations on addressing disinformation and mitigating associated risks, the Code of Practice on Disinformation that aims to commit signatories to a range of actions to counter disinformation. These actions include providing transparency reports on political advertising, restricting advertising placements on disinformation websites, disrupting advertising revenue for purveyors of disinformation, and enabling user feedback and fact-checking mechanisms. In this framework, compliance should not be limited to large platforms but extended, with adjustments, to smaller platforms to ensure a comprehensive approach)." (Recommendations, page 6) more

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Digital Platform Governance and the Challenges for Trust and Safety. Part 1: Why Lies and Hatred Proliferate on Digital Platforms

Research ICT Africa; UNESCO (2023), 21 pp.

"Online and platform content that may cause harm through the breach of human rights is sufficiently widespread to have raised concerns about the potentially severe implications for the future of trust, safety, democracy and sustainable development. A certain amount of this content is curbed by the d ... more

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The Propagation of Misinformation in Social Media: A Cross-Platform Analysis

Richard Rogers (ed.)

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (2023), 246 pp.

"In a cross-platform analysis of Google Web Search, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, 4chan and TikTok, we found that hyperpartisan web operators, alternative influencers and ambivalent commentators are in ascendency. The book can be read as a form of platform criticism. It puts on disp ... more

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WhatsApp and Transparency: An Analysis on the Effects of Digital Platforms’ Opacity in Political Communication Research Agendas in Brazil

Viktor Chagas, Gabriella Da-Costa

Profesional de la Información, volume 32, issue 2 (2023), 14 pp.

"This article aims to discuss what we call environmental opacity, a condition of mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) that operates on the basis of end-to-end encryption systems. Utilizing WhatsApp as a specific example, the article presents two fundamental dilemmas around which some issues conc ... more

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Moderación de contenidos en línea y construcción de paz en el posconflicto: Una revisión al marco normativo de Colombia

Juan Sebastián Salamanca Calle et al.

Bogotá: Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP) (2023), 86 pp.

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Die Stärkung von Kinderrechten durch den Digital Services Act (DSA): Wege zu Best-Practice-Ansätzen

Ingrid Stapf, Stefan Dreyer, Laura Schelenz et al.

Sicherheit für Kinder in der digitalen Welt (SIKID) (2023), 18 pp.

"Das vorliegende Papier soll die Umsetzung des neuen Digital Services Act (DSA) konstruktiv aus einer kinderrechtlichen Perspektive begleiten. Dabei wird gezeigt, welche Potenziale sich aus dem DSA ergeben, um Kinderrechte im Digitalen zu stärken. Im Fokus stehen Anbietermaßnahmen sowie auch Präv ... more

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Terrorist Content Analytics Platform. Year One: 1 December 2020 - 30 November 2021. Transparency Report

Tech Against Terrorism (2022), 33 pp.

"In November 2020, with support from Public Safety Canada, Tech Against Terrorism launched the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP). The world’s largest database of verified terrorist content, collected in real time from verified terrorist channels on messaging platforms and apps, the TCAP ... more

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Legal and Normative Frameworks for Combatting Online Violence Against Women Journalists

Angelique Lu, Julie Posetti, Nabeelah Shabbir

November 2022: UNESCO; International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) (2022), 35 pp.

"In this chapter, international, regional and State-level legal and normative frameworks for responding to online violence against women journalists are examined, while exemplar judgements are catalogued, and gaps in law enforcement are highlighted. Here, insights gleaned from 184 in-depth interview ... more

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History Under Attack: Holocaust Denial and Distortion on Social Media
Deep Insights

Heather Mann (coord.)

Paris: UNESCO (2022), 68 pp.

"This publication is the first report from UNESCO and the United Nations to specifically address Holocaust denial and distortion. It details the ways in which social media is fertile ground for hate and prejudice - and proposes actions we can take in response. Based on the data of billions of Facebo ... more

Platform Responses to Misinformation: A Meta-Analysis of Data Deep Insights

Challenges and Perspectives of Hate Speech Research Deep Insights

Platform Problems and Regulatory Solutions: Findings from a Comprehensive Review of Existing Studies and Investigations Deep Insights

History Under Attack: Holocaust Denial and Distortion on Social Media Deep Insights

Platform Responses to Misinformation: A Meta-Analysis of Data
Deep Insights

Challenges and Perspectives of Hate Speech Research
Deep Insights

Platform Problems and Regulatory Solutions: Findings from a Comprehensive Review of Existing Studies and Investigations
Deep Insights

History Under Attack: Holocaust Denial and Distortion on Social Media
Deep Insights