scholarly journals Suppressing Atrocity Speech on Social Media

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 256-261
Author(s):  
Emma Irving
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Fact Finding

In its August 2018 report on violence against Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar, the Fact Finding Mission of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that “the role of social media [was] significant” in fueling the atrocities. Over the course of more than four hundred pages, the report documented how Facebook was used to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incitement to violence in the lead-up to and during the violence in Myanmar. Concluding that there were reasonable grounds to believe that genocide was perpetrated against the Rohingya, the report indicated that “the Mission has no doubt that the prevalence of hate speech,” both offline and online, “contributed to increased tension and a climate in which individuals and groups may become more receptive to incitement.” The experience in Myanmar demonstrates the increasing role that social media plays in the commission of atrocities, prompting suggestions that social media companies should operate according to a human rights framework.

The Problem of Platform Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 973-994
Author(s):  
Molly K. Land
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
User Behavior ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Technological Design ◽  
User Choice ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Broad Array ◽  
The Right

The internet would seem to be an ideal platform for fostering norm diversity. The very structure of the internet resists centralized governance, while the opportunities it provides for the “long tail” of expression means even voices with extremely small audiences can find a home. In reality, however, the governance of online speech looks much more monolithic. This is largely a result of private “lawmaking” activity by internet intermediaries. Increasingly, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter are developing what David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur for the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, has called “platform law.” Through a combination of community standards, contract, technological design, and case-specific practice, social media companies are developing “Facebook law” and “Twitter law,” displacing the laws of national jurisdictions. Using the example of content moderation, this chapter makes several contributions to the literature. First, it expands upon the idea of “platform law” to consider the broad array of mechanisms that companies use to control user behavior and mediate conflicts. Second, using human rights law as a foundation, the chapter makes the case for meaningful technological design choices that enable user autonomy. Users should be able to make explicit choices about who and what they want to hear online. It also frames user choice in terms of the right to hear, not the right to speak, as a way of navigating the tension presented by hate speech and human rights without resorting to platform law that sanitizes speech for everyone.

Big tech's anti-Trump activism to have limited impact

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
Content Type ◽  
White House ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Capitol Hill ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Media Firms

Significance Facebook has indefinitely suspended Trump from its main platform and Instagram, while Twitter has done so permanently for his role in instigating violence at US Capitol Hill on January 6. These developments spotlight the role of social media firms in spreading and tackling hate speech and disinformation, and their power unilaterally to shut down public speech. Impacts Democratic control of the White House and Congress offers social media companies a two-year window to ensure softer regulation. The EU will push its new digital markets legislation with vigour following the events at US Capitol Hill. Hard-right social media will find new firms willing to host their servers, partly because their user numbers run to millions not billions.

Reforming the Role of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Advancing Democratic Principles and Human Rights in African Countries: An Examination Using the Lens of Swaziland/ eSwatini

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Sarkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Individual Country ◽  
The Status ◽  
Effective Role ◽  
Limited Compliance ◽  
Fact Finding ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
African Commission

This article explores the role of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the role it plays regarding human rights in individual country situations in Africa. It specifically examines the extent to which it has been able to advance a human rights agenda in countries with long-standing human rights problems. The article uses Swaziland/ eSwatini as a lens to examine the matter, because of the longstanding problems that exist in that country. This is done to indicate how the institution works over time on a country’s human rights problems. The article examines a range of institutional structural matters to establish how these issues affect the role of the Commission in its work. The article examines the way in which the Commission uses its various tools, including its communications, the state reporting processes, fact-finding visits, and resolutions, to determine whether those tools are being used effectively. The article examines how the Commission’s processes issues also affect it work. Issues examined negatively affecting the Commission are examined, including problems with the status of its resolutions and communications, limited compliance with its outcomes, and inadequate state cooperation. Reforms necessary to enhance to role and functions of the Commission are surveyed to determine how the institution could become more effective. The African Union’s (AU|) Kagame Report on AU reform is briefly reviewed to examine the limited view and focus of AU reform processes and why AU reform ought to focus on enhancing human rights compliance. The article makes various suggestions on necessary institutional reforms but also as far as the African Commission’s procedures and methods of work to allow it to have a far more effective role in the promotion and protection of human rights on the continent. It is noted that political will by the AU and African states is the largest obstacle to giving the Commission the necessary independence, support and assistance that it needs to play the role in Africa that it should.

Coming out of the closet? Audience reactions to the heteronormative disruptive advertising

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Ramasela Semang L. Mathobela ◽  
Shepherd Mpofu ◽  
Samukezi Mrubula-Ngwenya
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media

An emerging global trend of brands advertising their products through LGBTIQ+ individuals and couples indicates growth of gender awareness across the globe. The media, through advertising, deconstructs homophobia and associated cultures through the use of LGBTIQ+s in commercials. This qualitative research paper centres the advancement of debates on human rights and social media as critical in the interaction between corporates and consumers. The Gillette, Chicken Licken‘s Soul Sisters and We the Brave advertisements were used to critically analyse how audiences react to the use of LGBTIQ+ characters and casts through comments posted on the brands‘ social media platforms. Further, the paper explored the role of social media in the mediation of significant gender issues such as homosexuality that are considered taboo to engage in. The paper used a qualitative approach. Using the digital ethnography method to observe comments and interactions from the chosen advertisement‘s online platforms, the paper employed queer and constructionist theories to deconstruct discourses around same-sex relations as used in commercials, especially in quasiconservative. The data used in the paper included thirty comments of the brands customers and audiences obtained from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The paper concludes there are positive development in human rights awareness as seen through advertisements and campaigns that use LGBTIQ+ communities in a positive light across the world.

A market-based rationale for the privacy paradox

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110158
Author(s):  
Opeyemi Akanbi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Privacy Paradox ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Privacy Risks ◽  
Social Collective

Moving beyond the current focus on the individual as the unit of analysis in the privacy paradox, this article examines the misalignment between privacy attitudes and online behaviors at the level of society as a collective. I draw on Facebook’s market performance to show how despite concerns about privacy, market structures drive user, advertiser and investor behaviors to continue to reward corporate owners of social media platforms. In this market-oriented analysis, I introduce the metaphor of elasticity to capture the responsiveness of demand for social media to the data (price) charged by social media companies. Overall, this article positions social media as inelastic, relative to privacy costs; highlights the role of the social collective in the privacy crises; and ultimately underscores the need for structural interventions in addressing privacy risks.

The role of international human rights organisations in the context of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
Nina I. Karpachova
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
International Human

The task of this paper is to study the role of international human rights organizations in response to the conflict taking place in eastern Ukraine. The study is based on recent reports from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the OSCE on Ukraine. The relevance of the stated topic is determined by the situation with human rights violations in the armed conflict in Ukraine and the significant role of international human rights organizations, making active efforts to resolve it. The purpose of this study is to determine the main aspects of the role that international organizations play in resolving this range of issues. This will help to identify potential opportunities to tackle the problem with human rights violations in the Ukrainian territories. The study combines quantitative and qualitative research of the entire spectrum of issues brought into the subject. The main results obtained are: analysis of the role and place of international human rights organizations in assessing the situation with the conflict in the Ukrainian territories and obtaining statistical information on the current status of human rights violations in these territories. The value of this paper lies in obtaining practical recommendations for finding ways to peacefully resolve the conflict in the East of Ukraine and implementing comprehensive measures to create conditions for the protection of human rights in this region

scholarly journals Terrorist Speech under Bills C-51 and C-59 and the Othman Hamdan Case: The Continued Incoherence of Canada’s Approach

2019 ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Kent Roach
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Fundamental Freedoms

It is argued that neither the approach taken to terrorist speech in Bill C-51 nor Bill C-59 is satisfactory. A case study of the Othman Hamdan case, including his calls on the Internet for “lone wolves” “swiftly to activate,” is featured, along with the use of immigration law after his acquittal for counselling murder and other crimes. Hamdan’s acquittal suggests that the new Bill C-59 terrorist speech offence and take-down powers based on counselling terrorism offences without specifying a particular terrorism offence may not reach Hamdan’s Internet postings. One coherent response would be to repeal terrorist speech offences while making greater use of court-ordered take-downs of speech on the Internet and programs to counter violent extremism. Another coherent response would be to criminalize the promotion and advocacy of terrorist activities (as opposed to terrorist offences in general in Bill C-51 or terrorism offences without identifying a specific terrorist offence in Bill C-59) and provide for defences designed to protect fundamental freedoms such as those under section 319(3) of the Criminal Code that apply to hate speech. Unfortunately, neither Bill C-51 nor Bill C-59 pursues either of these options. The result is that speech such as Hamdan’s will continue to be subject to the vagaries of take-downs by social media companies and immigration law.

scholarly journals OF SEMI-COLONS AND THE INTERPRETATION OF THE HATE SPEECH DEFINITION IN THE EQUALITY ACT South African Human Rights Commission v Qwelane (Freedom of Expression Institute as Amici curiae) and a related matter [2017] 4 All SA 234 (GJ)

Obiter ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Botha
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Threshold Test ◽  
Related Matter ◽  
The Republic

In South African Human Rights Commission v Qwelane (hereinafter “Qwelane”) the constitutionality of the threshold test for the hate speech prohibition in section 10(1) of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000 (hereinafter the “Equality Act”) was challenged. Although the court had no difficulty in finding that the publication in question fell squarely within the parameters of hate speech, the judgment is both incoherent and flawed. The court’s conjunctive interpretation of the section 10(1) requirements for hate speech also differs from the disjunctive interpretation given to the same provision in Herselman v Geleba (ECD (unreported) 2011-09-01 Case No 231/09 hereinafter “Herselman”) by the Eastern Cape High Court. The consequence is a “fragmented jurisprudence” which impacts on legal certainty, and which is especially dangerous when the legislation in question is critical to the achievement of the constitutional mandate (Daniels v Campbell NO 2004 (5) SA 331 (CC) par 104 hereinafter “Daniels”).This note demonstrates that the Qwelane court misapplied a number of key principles. These include: the court’s mandate in terms of section 39(2) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (hereinafter the “Constitution”); the need to strike an appropriate balance between competing rights in the constitutional framework; the importance of definitional certainty for a hate speech threshold test; the meaning to be ascribed to the terms “hate”, “hurt” and “harm” in the context of hate speech legislation; and the role of international law when interpreting legislation intended to give effect to international obligations.The consequence of these errors for hate speech regulation in South Africa is profound.

Media or Corporations? Social Media Governance Between Public and Commercial Rationales

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-268
Author(s):  
Daniela Stockmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
National Level ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Active User ◽  
Corporate Governance Codes ◽  
Over Time

In public discussions of social media governance, corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are often first and foremost seen as providers of information and as media. However, social media companies’ business models aim to generate income by attracting a large, growing, and active user base and by collecting and monetising personal data. This has generated concerns with respect to hate speech, disinformation, and privacy. Over time, there has been a trend away from industry self-regulation towards a strengthening of national-level and European Union-level regulations, that is, from soft to hard law. Hence, moving beyond general corporate governance codes, governments are imposing more targeted regulations that recognise these firms’ profound societal importance and wide-reaching influence. The chapter reviews these developments, highlighting the tension between companies’ commercial and public rationales, critiques the current industry-specific regulatory framework, and raises potential policy alternatives.

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