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

By on February 9, 2022 in Center for Media Law and Policy, Internet

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

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Media Law and IP Sessions at the UNC Festival of Legal Learning

By on February 1, 2022 in Center for Media Law and Policy

One of the biggest annual events at the UNC School of Law is the Festival of Legal Learning. This year’s multi-day convocation of legal geekery comprises 28 different continuing legal education (CLE) sessions over four days. For the past few years, the Center for Media Law and Policy has helped with the selection and coordination of sessions that cover Media Law and Intellectual Property subjects.

This year’s festival, which takes place on February 1-4, 2022 will be entirely remote, so you can kick back at home and partake in one of the best CLE programs in the country.  Although the festival is much smaller this year, there are at least 5 sessions that touch on media law and IP topics, ranging from trademark law to a retrospective look at U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 Term. And the list of speakers is a who’s who of the top media and IP lawyers in the state. You can see a list of these folks and descriptions of their sessions on the law school’s event page.

Here are just a few of the sessions available at the festival this year:

Tuesday, Feb. 1

  • 1:15 PM  –  2:15 PM: Trademark Lessons from the Last Breakfast with Aunt Jemima 

Wednesday, Feb. 2

  • 1:15PM  –  2:15 PM: Federal Privacy Law Developments Highlights Since 2020
  • 2:30 PM  –  3:30 PM: Student-Athlete NIL Market is Open: What Do Attorneys Need to Know?
  • 3:45 PM  –  4:45 PM: U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 Term

Thursday, Feb. 3

  • 1:15 PM  –  2:15 PM: The State of the News Media

Friday, Feb. 4

  • 3:45 PM  –  4:45 PM: A View from the Bench: Reflections of a New Federal District Court Judge (with Judge Richard Myers)

You will not want to miss the session on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 Term, which includes Adam Liptak from the New York Times; Mary-Rose Papandrea, Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the UNC School of Law; Andy Hessick, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at the UNC School of Law; Osamudia James, Professor of Law at the UNC School of Law; and Alli Larsen, Professor of Law and Director, Institute of the Bill of Rights Law at William & Mary Law School.

To register for the Festival, please visit their registration page.

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Amanda Reid Joins Media Law Center as New Faculty Co-Director

By on September 21, 2021 in Center for Media Law and Policy

I’m thrilled to announce that Amanda Reid has joined the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy as faculty co-director of the Center.  Amanda is an associate professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and holds a secondary appointment at the UNC School of Law. She is replacing Tori Ekstrand, who served as the Center’s faculty co-director from 2018-2020. Tori has moved into a new role as the Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Distinguished Professor for Graduate Education at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Amanda’s research is anchored around the First Amendment. She analyzes the freedoms and limitations imposed on meaning-making processes, including how substantive laws and procedural rules impact—both positively and negatively—our ability to encode and decode meaning.  Her scholarly inquiries range from the free speech implications of copyright regulation of Internet radio to the visual presentation of roadside memorial crosses and the separation of church and state.

Amanda, who earned a Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Florida, has long contributed to the work of the Center by assisting with our M.A./J.D. and Ph.D./J.D. dual-degree programs in media law. With her training in both journalism and law, Amanda is uniquely well-suited to help grow the dual-degree program and assist in our ongoing work producing interdisciplinary research and scholarship examining how media law and policy can help traditional and new media meet the information needs of all Americans.

“I look forward to working with my brilliant colleagues and terrific students to host important conversations,” Amanda told me. “This is a vital moment to facilitate meaningful discussions about our First Amendment values.”

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

By on August 5, 2021 in Center for Media Law and Policy, First Amendment, Internet

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).

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2020 Cleary Writing Competition Winners Announced

By on July 20, 2021 in Center for Media Law and Policy

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy is thrilled to announce the winners of the third annual James R. Cleary Prize for the best student published scholarly articles on media law and policy.

This year’s first place winner is Scott Memmel, a 2020 graduate of the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, for his article, “Crossing Constitutional Boundaries: Searches and Seizures of Electronic Devices at U.S. Borders,” which was published in Communications Law and Policy.  Memmel’s article examines searches and seizures of electronic devices at U.S. borders and “seeks to chart the legal landscape by (1) providing key background information, (2) discussing the First Amendment angle of warrantless searches of journalists’ devices, and (3) detailing the split among federal circuit and district courts regarding the Fourth Amendment question of whether border agents need reasonable suspicion to conduct forensic searches of electronic devices.”

The second place winner is Jeeyun (Sophia) Baik, a 2021 graduate of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Her article, “Data privacy and political distrust: corporate ‘pro liars,’ ‘gridlocked Congress,’ and the Twitter issue public around the US privacy legislation,” was published in Information, Communication & Society. Baik’s article “explores how emerging US data privacy regulations are discussed at state and federal levels, examining Twitter discourse around Senate public hearings on data privacy and public forums on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).”

Memmel will receive a $1,000 cash award and Baik will receive $500.

Scott Memmel

Scott Memmel, M.A., Ph.D. is a postdoctoral associate at the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication (HSJMC), where he earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2020 and his Master of Arts degree in 2017.

Memmel’s research, which focuses on media law, history, and ethics, has appeared in several respected publications, including Communication Law & Policy. His dissertation and upcoming book to be published by the University of Missouri Press focus on the history and law of the press-police relationship in the United States. Memmel’s dissertation, “Pressing the Police and Policing the Press: The History and Law of the Relationship Between the News Media and Law Enforcement in the United States,” was awarded the 2021 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award and the 2020 University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication Ralph D. Casey Dissertation Research Award. Memmel has worked for several years at the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law, where he previously served as editor of the Silha Bulletin, a thrice-yearly publication focusing on current events related to media law and ethics.

Memmel also teaches several courses at the University of Minnesota, including mass communication law and media ethics. Previously, he held several roles at WSUM 91.7 FM while completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Wisconsin.

Jeeyun (Sophia) Baik

Jeeyun (Sophia) Baik is an incoming postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity at UC Berkeley School of Information. She earned her doctoral degree from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research explores socio-political implications of media/technology law and policy for those at the margins of society. She particularly examines various stakeholders’ engagement in the governance of media and information technology, covering the issues of privacy/surveillance, content moderation, and mis/disinformation.

Baik’s dissertation closely investigated the “civil right” of data privacy as a regulatory alternative to address discrimination and structural inequities being reinforced in the digital era. Mapping civil society perspectives onto the data-driven political economy and emerging US privacy laws (e.g., California Consumer Privacy Act), she articulated the limitations of traditional privacy regulations and suggested new ways to collectively envision a more just framework.

Baik’s research has been published in Information, Communication & Society, Telematics & Informatics, International Journal of Communication, and Mass Media & Society. Baik also holds a BA in International Relations from Seoul National University in South Korea, and a master’s in Public Diplomacy from the University of Southern California. She produced broadcasting news prior to the doctoral program.

You can read more about the Cleary Prize competition here. Please check the Center’s blog for an announcement of next year’s deadline to apply.

Congratulations to the winners!

 

 

 

 

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