There is no denying the fact that social media and the Internet have the power to inform, educate, spread knowledge and create new pathways of activism. At the same time, the online world is full of deep, dark spaces. Fake news, misinformation, cyber-harassment and hate speech proliferate. They endanger the social fabric of our communities. They also threaten our democracies. European Union-imposed regulations have attempted, for some time, to address hate speech and protect individuals’ privacy. The latest regulation – the Digital Services Act – was adopted in the spring of 2022 and will force social media companies to moderate content on their platforms. Can online regulation be effective? Will it offer protection from disinformation or will it, as some critics argue, stifle freedom of expression?
In order to tackle these issues, Vis A Vis invited Columbia University’s Anya Schiffrin and Julia Cagé, professor at Sciences Po in Paris.
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Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a lecturer who teaches on global media, innovation and human rights. She writes on journalism and development, investigative reporting in the global south and has published extensively over the last decade on the media in Africa. More recently she has become focused on solutions to the problem of online disinformation, earning her PHD on the topic from the University of Navarra. She is the editor of Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World (New Press, 2014) and African Muckraking: 75 years of Investigative journalism from Africa (Jakana 2017). She is the editor of the forthcoming Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms and Governments Control the News (Columbia University Press 2020)
Julia Cagé is Associate Professor of Economics (with tenure) since 2021 and joined the Department in 2014. In 2018 she became the Co-director of LIEPP’s “Evaluation of Democracy” research group. She is also a CEPR Research Fellow.
Her research focuses on political economy, industrial organization and economic history. She is particularly interested in media economics, political participation and political attitudes. Her research has been published in a number of peer-reviewed international journals such as The Review of Economic Studies, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Explorations in Economic History, the Journal of International Economics, and the European Economic Review. She is already the author of several books accessible to the general public: “Saving the Media – Capitalism, Crowdfunding, and Democracy” (Le Seuil, 2015; Harvard University Press, 2016) and “L’information à tout prix” (joint with N. Hervé and M.-L. Viaud, INA Editions, 2017). Her third book « Le prix de la démocratie » was published in 2018 by Fayard (English edition, Harvard University Press, 2020).
After completing her university studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and Paris School of Economics, Julia Cagé obtained her PhD at Harvard University in 2014.
Credits
Host: Dr. Emmanuel Kattan
Editor and Producer: Monica Beatrice Hunter-Hart
Producer: Abdibasid Ali