News and Research articles on Facebook

Will the same cross-device technologies that track our journeys through the commercial marketplace now follow us into the polling booth?

This paper examines how Google Search ranked 29 junk news domains between 2016 and 2019, finding that SEO — rather than paid advertising — is the most important strategy for generating discoverability via Google Search. Google has taken several steps to combat the spread of disinformation on Search, and these strategies have been largely successful at limiting the discoverability of junk news.

This paper discusses how online political micro-targeting is regulated in Europe, from the perspective of data protection law, freedom of expression, and political advertising rules.

Personalised political messaging undermines voter autonomy and the electoral process. Use of voter analytics for political communication must be regulated.

Is the “European approach” an adequate response to the challenges of disinformation and political manipulation, especially in election periods?

This paper analyses the spread of misinformation in the context of 2018 Brazilian elections. We give a general overview of the Brazilian political context, its media ecosystem and the weaponisation of the country’s most popular messaging app, WhatsApp, as a political persuasion tool. The current architecture of the platform does not allow, once appropriated for purposes of election campaigns, users to notice or become aware that they are being monitored and managed.

Discussing three factors that characterise the activities of political campaigners, this article demonstrates variations in who is using data in campaigns, what the sources of campaign data are, and how data informs communication.

Ad archives are a novel tool in online advertising governance. They promise significant benefits, but only if their operators address key criticisms.

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 …

Standard form consumer contracts (SFCCs), including Terms of Service agreements, are drafted by businesses and presented to consumers on a non-negotiable basis. Since these contracts present an asymmetric imbalance of information and resources between parties, they have been of concern for consumer rights in recent years. While some have characterized these issues as a ‘duty to read’ for consumers or as egregious terms and weak disclosures by drafters,’ this project suggests at least part of the issues exist from a lack of consideration of the document itself (i.e., medium, format, authenticy, reliability, stability) and the processes that deem it ‘standard.’

Datafication (the quantification of social life) is a colonial move which perpetuates a legacy of appropriation. But how to regulate this?

People are increasingly concerned that data collectors can use information about them to subtly influence their decision-making—what is often called “online manipulation”. To further efforts at combating such strategies, this paper defines “online manipulation” and explores the harms it threatens.

Why did China’s Alibaba platform reform its enforcement practices in line with demands from the US government and US companies?

What are the informal arrangements governing online content on platforms in Europe, and what are the factors that make them more or less successful?

Data ethics has gained traction in policy-making. The article presents an analytical investigation of the different dimensions and actors shaping data ethics in European policy-making.

Net neutrality consultations that tap into networked publics rest on a thin version of participation that maintains existing inequality.

The German Network Enforcement Act is an attempt to counteract the effects of hate speech on social media platforms. This paper analyses and evaluates the reports on the handling of complaints about unlawful content after its coming into force.

This paper compares two controversies in social media governance and argues that social media companies’ actions indicate an expanded role for marketing and advertising as arbiters of the public interest in media content delivery.