Archive | Internet

New UNC Center on Technology Policy

I’m thrilled that UNC is launching a new center focused on technology policy!  The UNC Center on Technology Policy (CTP) will hold its first public event on Friday, April 29, but they have already been working hard — and having an impact — on the conversation about how to regulate online content, with a fantastic policy brief on “Understanding, Enforcement, and Investment: Options and Opportunities for State Regulation of Online Content.”

CTP’s mission is to help craft public policy for a better internet. Utilizing an interdisciplinary academic framework, CTP works to identify knowledge gaps and develop actionable policy frameworks that will enable us to realize the potential benefits of technology while minimizing its harms. By working closely with students and expanding the University’s offerings in technology policy analysis, we seek to cultivate and train the field’s future practitioners.  For more on CTP’s plans, you can read a recent overview of the center in The Well.

The new center is lead by Matt Perault, a professor of the practice at UNC’s School of Information & Library Science (SILS) and a consultant on technology policy issues.  He previously led the Center on Science & Technology Policy at Duke University and was a professor of the practice at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy.  Before that, Matt worked at Facebook, where he was a director on the public policy team and the head of the global policy development team.  He covered issues ranging from antitrust to law enforcement to human rights and oversaw the company’s policy work on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Matt holds a law degree from Harvard Law School, a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, and a Bachelor’s degree in political science from Brown University.

To mark their public launch, CTP will be hosting an event on Zoom at noon on Friday, April 29, about state efforts to regulate platform content.  They have a fantastic lineup of panelists, including Emma Llansó (Center for Democracy & Technology), Wendy Gooditis (VA House of Delegates), Mary-Rose Papandrea (UNC School of Law), and Steve DelBianco (NetChoice).  You can register for the event, which is free and open to the public, here.

The new center, which is based at the SILS, will work closely with UNC’s Center on Information, Technology, and Public Life and the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.  Welcome to the neighborhood, CTP!

0

Alaska, Colorado, and Virginia Enact Sponsorship Disclosure Requirements for Online Political Advertisements

In partnership with the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), the Center for Media Law and Policy has been researching and summarizing state laws that impose disclosure and/or recordkeeping requirements on online platforms that carry digital political advertisements. 

Digital political ads have become an increasingly important tool for political candidates and committees, yet existing federal laws governing political advertisements focus primarily on traditional mediums of communication. While the Federal Election Commission has detailed sponsorship disclosure requirements for political advertising on television and radio, the agency currently does not regulate online political advertising in the same way. Congress proposed legislation in 2017, 2019, and 2021 to extend existing disclosure requirements for political advertisements to online political advertisements, but no action has been taken on these bills. 

To fill this regulatory gap, a handful of states have enacted new legislation or amended their existing election laws to increase transparency by imposing sponsorship disclosure and/or recordkeeping requirements for online political advertisements. As of 2020, six states had enacted such laws, which we analyzed in a report written by Ashley Fox and Dr. Tori Ekstrand, “Regulating the Political Wild West: State Efforts to Disclose Sources of Online Political Advertising,” and summarized on the CITAP Digital Politics website under the section on State Disclosure and Recordkeeping Requirements for Digital Political Ads

Since 2020, three additional states, Alaska, Colorado, and Virginia, have enacted their own laws requiring sponsorship disclosure for online political ads. We’ve updated the CITAP Digital Politics pages to include summaries of the new laws, which you can read here.

The Highlights: 

Virginia’s regulations are the most comprehensive, with disclosure requirements varying based on the type of ad and who paid for it. Rather than creating new disclosure requirements specifically for online political ads, Virginia’s law instead subjects different types of online ads to its existing requirements for print, broadcast, and radio ads. For the purposes of disclosure requirements, online graphic advertisements with no video or audio components are treated like print ads; online video advertisements are treated like broadcast ads; and online audio-only advertisements are treated like radio ads. 

The Virginia law, however, does not impose liability on online platforms for any political ads that fail to include the required disclosures. The law also requires individuals and organizations that purchase or promote an online political ad to tell the platform they are political advertisers and certify that they are permitted under state and local laws to purchase or promote online political ads. 

In contrast, Colorado and Alaska’s laws create new disclosure requirements for online political ads. While Alaska’s law has different requirements based on whether an online political ad has print, video, or audio components, Colorado’s law has one set of disclosure requirements for all online political ads, regardless of the content type. 

You can read more about the specifics of each state’s recordkeeping and disclosure requirements on the CITAP Digital Politics site here

Noelle Wilson, CITAP Media Law Fellow

0

State Regulation of Election-Related Speech in the U.S.: An Overview and Comparative Analysis

I’m excited to announce that the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy, in partnership with the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), just published a research report titled State Regulation of Election-Related Speech in the U.S.: An Overview and Comparative Analysis.

The report presents a comprehensive analysis of state efforts to regulate the content of election-related speech and is part of an ongoing multi-method research project focused on how platforms and digital media are changing electoral politics. It extends and builds on a report the Center published with CITAP in September 2020, Regulating the Political Wild West: State Efforts to Disclose Sources of Online Political Advertising, that examined disclosure and recordkeeping regulations for online political advertising.

You might be thinking, given the extent of misinformation associated with the last election, that there are no laws against lying in politics. It turns out that the opposite is true. Although the federal government has largely stayed out of regulating the content of election-related speech, the states have been surprisingly active in passing laws that prohibit false statements associated with elections. By our count, forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have such laws!

For this report, we reviewed more than 125 state statutes that regulate the content of election-related speech. These laws take one of two basic forms: statutes that directly target the content of election-related speech, and generally applicable statutes that indirectly implicate election-related speech by prohibiting intimidation or fraud associated with an election.

What we found is that these election-speech statutes deviate significantly from longstanding theories of liability for false speech. First, the statutes cover a broader range of speech than has traditionally been subject to government restriction: the statutes cover everything from merely derogatory statements about candidates (defamation requires false statements that create a degree of moral opprobrium) to false information about ballot measures, voting procedures, and incumbency. Second, a substantial number of the statutes impose liability regardless of whether the speaker knew the information was false or acted negligently.

Obviously, many of the statutes could be subject to significant First Amendment challenges.  For purposes of this report, however, we have not made any assessment as to whether specific statutes are constitutional. We’ll be doing that examination in a later phase of this project.

To aid in the analysis and comparison of the statutes, we created a multi-level taxonomy of the types of speech the statutes target and cataloged which states have statutes that fall within each category. In the appendix, we provide a summary for each state that outlines the relevant statutory provisions and provides a brief description of the restrictions the statutes impose as well as the types of speakers to which they apply.

Political speech has long been viewed as residing at the core of the First Amendment’s protections for speech. Yet it has become increasingly clear that lies and other forms of misinformation associated with elections are corrosive to democracy. Regardless of whether individual statutes survive First Amendment scrutiny, it is useful to examine the breadth and depth of state efforts to deal with lies, misinformation, intimidation, and fraud in elections. The surprising number of statutes already on the books clearly demonstrate that state legislatures see a problem that needs to be addressed. Moreover, apart from government efforts to impose civil and criminal liability for election-related speech, these statutes (and the taxonomy we describe in this report) can be useful to social media platforms and other intermediaries that facilitate election-related speech. If nothing else, the statutes provide a partial roadmap for identifying the types of speech – and election harms – that may warrant intervention.

The report and associated research is now up on the CITAP Digital Politics site, which includes pages for every state that outlines the relevant statutory provisions and provides a brief description of the restrictions the statutes impose as well as the types of speakers to which they apply (you can also download the report itself from SSRN).

0

Addressing the Decline of Local News, Rise of Platforms, and Spread of Mis- and Disinformation Online: A Summary of Current Research and Policy Proposals

I’m thrilled to announce that the Center for Media Law and Policy recently published a research paper titled “Addressing the Decline of Local News, Rise of Platforms, and Spread of Mis- and Disinformation Online: A Summary of Current Research and Policy Proposals.”

The whitepaper grew out of a workshop the Center hosted in November 2019 in conjunction with the UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media and UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), which brought together experts on the decline of local news, the rise of online platforms, and the spread of mis- and disinformation. The workshop was part of a two-day, interdisciplinary conference titled “Fostering an Informed Society: The Role of the First Amendment in Strengthening Local News and Democracy.” The conference began with a symposium at the UNC School of Law hosted by the First Amendment Law Review that examined the role of the First Amendment in creating an informed society and explored whether the Constitution places affirmative obligations on the government to ensure that citizens are informed.

The workshop, which is the subject of this whitepaper, took place on the second day at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and was co-led by Philip Napoli, James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. A full list of workshop attendees is included in Appendix A.

The whitepaper is organized in the same way we structured the workshop, starting with an overview of the decline of local news followed by a discussion of the rise of platforms and the spread of mis- and disinformation online. We then examine a number of regulatory and policy responses to the problems identified in the earlier sections and conclude by offering some suggestions for next steps. In Appendix B we provide a list of recent research and resources available for those who wish to engage in more study of these important issues.

Here is the abstract:

Technological and economic assaults have destroyed the for-profit business model that sustained local journalism in this country for two centuries. While the advertising-based model for local news has been under threat for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic and recession have created what some describe as an “extinction level” threat for local newspapers and other struggling news outlets. More than one-fourth of the country’s newspapers have disappeared, leaving residents in thousands of communities living in vast news deserts.

As local news sources decline, a growing proportion of Americans are getting their news and other information from social media. This raises serious concerns, including the spread of misinformation and the use of platform infrastructure to engage in disinformation campaigns. Platforms wield significant advantages over local news sources in the current information environment: the dominant platforms possess proprietary, detailed caches of user data, which the platforms use to force advertisers, users, and news outlets into asymmetrical relationships. In the vacuum left by the disappearance of local news sources, users are increasingly reliant on information sources that are incomplete, and may be misleading or deceptive.

This whitepaper examines current research related to the decline of local news, the rise of platforms, and the spread of mis- and disinformation and explores potential regulatory and policy responses to these issues. Some proposals focus on increasing the supply of – and demand for – local news, including increased public education and expanded support for journalists and local news organizations. Other proposals focus on market-based reforms that address the growing power disparities between news producers and platform operators as well as between platforms and their users.

Solutions to the difficult problems we face will require a multifaceted, multi-disciplinary approach. No one lever within the market, law, or society will deliver a magic bullet. Instead, experts and policymakers will need to pull at multiple levers using a new vocabulary to talk across the different disciplines – a set of new propositions that recognize the legal, social, journalistic, and economic principles at stake, particularly the harm done to democracy if the status quo continues.

You can download the full paper here or from SSRN.

The Hearst Foundations provided funding for the workshop, and funding for the preparation of the whitepaper was provided by the Hearst Foundations and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

0

Faculty and Student Opportunities at UNC’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP)

UNC’s recently launched Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) is looking for faculty and students to join its growing community, including faculty research fellows, faculty affiliates, and graduate student affiliates.

CITAP is a bold initiative at UNC dedicated to researching, understanding, and responding to the growing impact of the internet, social media, and other forms of digital information sharing. CITAP’s goals include tackling broad research questions with real-world implications for information gathering, social media regulation, democratic governance, journalism, and civic understanding. Researchers and affiliates will work to develop a comprehensive understanding of information environments that will serve as a baseline for emergent research focused on the interaction of information and technology, particularly in the context of misinformation, partisanship, polarization, propaganda, and political institutions.

UNC CITAP Faculty Research Fellow

CITAP is seeking a Faculty Research Fellow to start in August 2020 and serve for one academic year. The position is restricted to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty. The Faculty Research Fellow will receive $15,000 in research funds, and will be expected to attend CITAP events and give a public presentation of their work at the end of the fellowship.

The successful applicant will join a vibrant research community anchored by CITAP’s four principal researchers—Deen Freelon (Hussman School of Journalism and Media), Daniel Kreiss (Hussman), Alice Marwick (Dept. of Communication), and Zeynep Tufekci (School of Information and Library Sciences)—the affiliated UNC Center for Media Law and Policy (David Ardia and Tori Ekstrand), and two Senior Faculty Researchers, Tressie McMillan Cottom (SILS) and Shannon McGregor (Hussman).

CITAP affiliates will meet regularly for research updates and internal presentations.

To apply, please email a one-page proposed research project that complements the aims of the center and the work of its scholars along with a CV to CITAP Principal Alice Marwick at amarwick@unc.edu.  The deadline to apply is Sept. 1, 2020.

UNC CITAP Faculty Affiliates

Faculty Affiliates can come from a broad range of academic and research institutions, especially in North Carolina. We invite applications from people working on issues related to CITAP, broadly focused on the intersection of technology and media, platforms, misinformation, partisanship, polarization, propaganda, political institutions, and journalism. Affiliates may collaborate with CITAP researchers on topics of relevance to its mission and participate in CITAP events, and will be listed in the “Faculty Affiliates” section of the CITAP website.

We invite those with CITAP faculty affiliations to attend CITAP events, collaborate with our researchers and graduate students, and join our extended community in resource and information sharing.

To apply, please email a bio, CV, and list of relevant publications to CITAP Principal Researcher Daniel Kreiss at dkreiss@email.unc.edu.

UNC CITAP Graduate Student Affiliates

Graduate Student Affiliates can come from a broad range of academic and research institutions, especially in North Carolina. We invite applications from people working on issues related to CITAP, broadly focused on the intersection of technology and media, platforms, misinformation, partisanship, polarization, propaganda, political institutions, and journalism. Affiliates may collaborate with CITAP researchers on topics of relevance to its mission and participate in CITAP events, and will be listed in the “Faculty Affiliates” section of the CITAP website.

We invite those with CITAP graduate student  affiliations to attend CITAP events, collaborate with our researchers and graduate students, and join our extended community in resource and information sharing.

To apply, please send a short cover letter explaining how your research interests relate to the work of CITAP, bio, CV, and list of relevant publications to CITAP Principal Researcher Daniel Kreiss at dkreiss@email.unc.edu.

0