News and Research articles on Social media

Volume 8, Issue 4

Filter bubble

Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
PUBLISHED ON: 29 Nov 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.4.1426

Concepts such as ‘filter bubble’ enjoy considerable popularity in scholarly as well as mainstream debates, but are rarely defined with any rigour. This has led to highly contradictory research findings. This article provides a critical review of the ‘filter bubble’ idea, and concludes that its persistence has served only to distract scholarly attention from far more critical areas of enquiry.

KEYWORDS: Filter bubble, Echo chambers, Social media, Social network, Polarisation
Volume 8, Issue 2

Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports

Amélie Heldt, Hans-Bredow-Institut
PUBLISHED ON: 12 Jun 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.2.1398

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.

KEYWORDS: NetzDG, Speech regulation, Social media, Transparency, Content moderation
Social media

Is the internet helping democracy or autocracy in Turkey?

Osman Coşkunoğlu, Turkish Parliament (formerly a member of)

PUBLISHED ON: 7 Feb 2017

After the global euphoria about the internet's potentials for empowering individuals and supporting democracy, more realistic arguments have been put forward against this optimism. 1 Indeed, we have been observing an ongoing fight between the autocratic government in Turkey and the Turkish people over using the internet for the last 10 years. It started with Law No. 5651 which was passed in 2007.