Focusing on whether data-intensive technologies used in political campaigning are accurate and effective misses the point about their larger role in politics. This piece briefly addresses the popular question of “Does it work?” and suggests a series of questions and provocations that aim to more holistically capture the extent of tech-led

Privacy

Big data and democracy: a regulator’s perspective

Michael P. McEvoy, Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia
PUBLISHED ON: 31 Dec 2019

This commentary is part of Data-driven elections , a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Colin J. Bennett and David Lyon. Introduction: all roads lead to Victoria, British Columbia As the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, I am entrusted with enforcing the province’s two pieces of privacy legislation –

Online manipulation

Autonomy and online manipulation

Michael Klenk, Stanford University
Jeff Hancock, Stanford University
PUBLISHED ON: 19 Dec 2019

More and more researchers argue that online technologies manipulate human users and, therefore, undermine their autonomy. This view of online technology, however, fails conceptually.

Online research

The implications of venturing down the rabbit hole

Jonas Kaiser, Harvard University
Adrian Rauchfleisch, National Taiwan University
PUBLISHED ON: 27 Jun 2019

While conducting research on YouTube’s algorithms, three researchers discovered that YouTube’s recommendations had created a community of sexually suggestive channels. When they shared their findings with The New York Times, YouTube implemented changes, and US lawmakers demanded consequences.

Data controller

Data subjects as data controllers: a Fashion(able) concept?

Lilian Edwards, Newcastle University
Michèle Finck, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Dr Michael Veale, University College London
Nicolo Zingales, Tilburg University
PUBLISHED ON: 13 Jun 2019

Recent case-law of the European Court of Justice has substantially widened the notion of “data controller" in unclear and potentially onerous ways for a range of actors involved in personal data processing. This has worrying implications for data subjects who may be characterised as controllers, and for emergent decentralised and privacy

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