Week 2: Media & Content Moderation

Time: Monday, July 13 at 11am (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Jonathan Zittrain

Description: This lecture will look at how current technological trends, especially big data and AI related, reinforce structural inequality in societies. It will highlight how many of these changes are in a persistent state of conflict with the human rights guarantees contained in the UN human rights Charter. The seminar will end by providing students a discussion of alternate frameworks in which to locate and address the role of AI in structural inequality.

Guiding Questions: For these readings, keep an open mind about what draws your attention and interest; this will be important for the discussion in this session.

Required viewing

Required Viewings

• Lecture 1: https://youtu.be/xBfYsBbDve8 (62 minutes)

• Lecture 2: https://youtu.be/44u0sRLGwgQ (57 minutes)

Time: Monday, July 13 at 3 pm (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Brenda Dvoskin

Description: This session begins with an introduction to rationales to regulate freedom of speech in the US. The second half focuses on what is new in this medium of expression and how traditional theory scales up. This could include a brief description of the brief history of content moderation (from optimism to the techlash to the post-covid world).

Guiding Questions:

• • Why and how do we regulate freedom of expression?

  • How does expression work on social media?

  • What are the different approaches to content moderation?

Required readings

• Nathalie Maréchal and Ellery Roberts Biddle, It's Not Just the Content, It's the Business Model: Democracy’s Online Speech Challenge, Open Technology Institute (2020).

Additional readings

• The Underworld of Online Content Moderation (New Yorker)

Time: Tuesday, July 14 at 11 am (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Susan Benesch

Description: Private social media companies are quietly running the largest system of censorship the world has ever known - almost entirely in the dark. So far, external actors from civil society and governments have reacted mainly in one way: asking the companies to do a better job. Since that hasn't been sufficient, Susan Benesch will offer ideas for both substantive and structural reform of companies' content moderation. She will describe how international human rights law could serve as a substantive basis for speech regulation by companies, and will discuss possibilities for meaningful oversight of companies' enforcement of their own rules - on the huge scales at which they operate.

Guiding Questions:

• Should each social media company have one set of content moderation rules for the whole world, as most of them now do?

• Have you ever read the rules of any platform on which you have an account? Do you think it matters whether people have read the rules?

• Do you think most harmful content online is spread by bad actors who put a lot of time and intention into that task, or by others who are not dedicated to it?

• Do you know whether a platform like Facebook takes down the same sort of content at the same rate when it is posted by women vs. men? White people vs. people of color? Indians vs. Pakistanis, etc?

• What research questions would you pose if you hoped to produce findings that might improve speech governance online? How would you go about answering your questions/conducting the research, including obtaining any data you would need?

Required readings

• Kate Klonick, The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Free Speech, 131 Harv. L. Rev. (2018)

• Susan Benesch, Seven Proposals for Improved Regulation of Harmful Online Content

• Facebook Civil Rights Audit

• Deepa Seetharaman, Wall Street Journal, Jack Dorsey's Push to Clean up Twitter Stalls, Researchers Say

Time: Tuesday, July 14, at 7pm (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)

Session Leads: David Weinberger

Description: Want to write a book to reach a wider audience? Great! But writing a book for a general readership takes more than translating your terminology and providing the background that you take for granted. In fact, the major challenge is not making your ideas understandable, but making them interesting to lay readers. Then the second task is keeping their interest. This often means structuring your book as an intellectual narrative, very different from the logical form usual in academic writing. We'll talk about how to do this, and discuss book ideas some of you may already have.

Read the documents and if possible, come to the session prepared to possibly discuss an idea for a book that you might want to publish based upon your research.

• Author Overview

• Proposal Elements

Time: Wednesday, July 15 at 11 am (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Rob Faris

Description: In this session we will explore the structure of political media ecosystems, polarization, and the propagation of propaganda and disinformation.

Guiding Questions:

• To what do we attribute the spread of disinformation?

• Who is responsible?

• What interventions might help?

Required readings

• Read the first chapter of Network Propaganda (you can skim or skip the definitions)

Time: Thursday, July 16 at 10:30 am (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Padmashree Sampath & james Suguru Wahutu

Description:

Guiding Questions:

• How does media representation promote some kinds of knowledge paradigms over others, and what impact it has on the way we shape identity and ownership of knowledge creation from the South, especially Africa?

• How do journalists (predominantly structured within the societies they operate), explain the functioning or malfunctioning of communities that they are not part of?

Required readings

• Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality by Aníbal Quijano

• Coronavirus Outbreak out of Control in US by Jina Mooe (satire)

Time: Thursday, July 16 at 3 pm (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Dario Rodighiero

Description: The presentation is composed of a theoretical framework and of a series of examples organized in three time-based groups: classic visualizations (18th and 19th centuries), modern visualizations (20th century), and contemporary visualizations (21st century). This introduction is not intended to be historically exhaustive, the intent is rather to have an overview of the domain and foster a discussion in the class.

Required readings

• None

Time: Friday, July 17 at 11 am (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Julie Owono

Description: This session begins with an introduction to rationales to regulate freedom of speech in the US. The second half focuses on what is new in this medium of expression and how traditional theory scales up. This could include a brief description of the brief history of content moderation (from optimism to the techlash to the post-covid world).

Guiding Questions:

• • Why would we regulate racist speech?

  • When should we regulate racist speech on social media?

  • How different rationales to regulate racist speech translate into different regulatory choices?

  • Are these questions relevant to online content moderation?

Required readings

• Future of Freedom of expression ( esp I. Background on Relevant UN Standards)

• When Content Moderation Hurts, by the Mozilla Foundation

• Analysis of French Constitutional Court's decision on Hate speech Law

Additional readings

• P. 4-11 Understanding Harmful Speech Online

• Danielle Citron and Jon Penney, When Law Frees Us to Speak, Fordham Law Review (2019).

• Mary Matsuda, Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s Story, in Words that Wound (1993).

• Owen Fiss, Free Speech and Social Structure, Iowa Law Review (1986).

Time: Friday, July 17 at 3 pm (Zoom link will be shared on Slack at in the Announcements channel on the day of the session)
Session Leads: Jan Gerlach

Description:

Guiding Questions:

• • Have you ever changed a page on Wikipedia or played other moderation roles?

  • If you had to moderate a large community like Wikipedia, how would approach it? What are the values and rights that you would want to promote or protect?

  • When would you use human moderation versus automated systems?

  • How can content moderation and inclusion of diverse perspectives go together?"

Required readings

• Content and Conduct: How English Wikipedia Moderates Harmful Speech

Additional readings

• https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2018/06/14/dont-force-platforms-to-replace-communities-with-algorithms/

• https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-online-encyclopedia-best-place-internet/

• Blog post: Moderation and Sense of Community in a Youth-Oriented Online Platform: Scratch’s Governance Strategy for Addressing Harmful Speech

• Blog post: Building a Safe Digital Space for Young Makers and Learners: The Case of DIY.org

• Blog post: Positive Social Relationships, Mentorship, and Constructive Dialogue: Connected Camps Governance Strategy for “Kid-friendly” Minecraft Servers