Algorithmic governance as a key concept in controversies around the emerging digital society takes up the idea that digital technologies produce social ordering in a specific way.
Information and communication technologies allow tax administrations to gather and process large amounts of data in order to individuate tax evaders. However, how to strike a balance between privacy rights and tax compliance?
Ad archives are a novel tool in online advertising governance. They promise significant benefits, but only if their operators address key criticisms.
Do machines have morality? Should robots have rights? Which ethical guideline should we adopt to orient their advancement? In this paper we will discuss the main normative and ethical challenges imposed by the artificial intelligence context.
This special issue brings together the best policy-oriented papers presented at the 2018 Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference in Montréal, Canada.
Public policy proposals regarding algorithms are often based on purely theoretically derived risk assessments. We propose a user-centred mixed-methods approach for more evidence-based policymaking.
This paper analyses the aftermath of the advertiser revolt on YouTube to draw out the broader implications of the controversy as it relates to the algorithmic gatekeeping of culture. It argues that the event shows as never before that decisions about categorisation and classification of cultural content invariably affect the financial trajectory of the said content. It ends by calling for broader stakeholder participation within key decision-making processes of digital platforms.
This paper is part of Transnational materialities, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by José van Dijck and Bernhard Rieder. 1. Digitalisation and democracy: proposal for a research perspective The relevance of digital media for contemporary democracies is a subject of increasing interest across the social sciences, the media and the political sphere. We are observing a growing diversity of political engagement, political actors and organisational forms, particularly around election and referendum campaigns. At the same time, conventional boundaries between social movements, public audiences and political parties, even between political and non-political action are …
This paper is part of Transnational materialities, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by José van Dijck and Bernhard Rieder. Introduction In March 2019, the European Commission fined Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. 1.5 billion euro for antitrust violations in the online advertising market—the third fine in three years. In July 2018, European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had levied a record fine of 4.3 billion euro on Google for breaching European competition rules by forcing cell phone manufacturers to pre-install a dozen of the firms’ apps when using Android—Google’s mobile operating system. And in 2016, the company was punished for unlawfully favouring Google …
This paper is part of Transnational materialities, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by José van Dijck and Bernhard Rieder. Introduction Questions about how data is generated, collected and used have taken hold of public imagination in recent years, not least in relation to government. While the collection of data about populations has always been central to practices of governance, the digital era has placed increased emphasis on the politics of data in state-citizen relations and contemporary power dynamics. In part a continuation of long-standing processes of bureaucratisation, the turn to data-centric practices in government across Western democracies emerges out of …