scholarly journals “I see something you don’t see”: A computational analysis of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act

10.51868/6 ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 84-116
Author(s):  
Fabiana Di Porto ◽  
Tatjana Grote ◽  
Gabriele Volpi ◽  
Riccardo Invernizzi
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Computational Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consultation Process ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Stakeholder Groups ◽  
Digital Services ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
House Judiciary Committee

In its latest proposals, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission puts forward several new obligations for online intermediaries, especially large online platforms and “gatekeepers.” Both are expected to serve as a blueprint for regulation in the United States, where lawmakers have also been investigating competition on digital platforms and new antitrust laws passed the House Judiciary Committee as of June 11, 2021. This Article investigates whether all stakeholder groups share the same understanding and use of the relevant terms and concepts of the DSA and DMA. Leveraging the power of computational text analysis, we find significant differences in the employment of terms like “gatekeepers,” “self-preferencing,” “collusion,” and others in the position papers of the consultation process that informed the drafting of the two latest Commission proposals. Added to that, sentiment analysis shows that in some cases these differences also come with dissimilar attitudes. While this may not be surprising for new concepts such as gatekeepers or self-preferencing, the same is not true for other terms, like “self-regulatory,” which not only is used differently by stakeholders but is also viewed more favorably by medium and big companies and organizations than by small ones. We conclude by sketching out how different computational text analysis tools, could be combined to provide many helpful insights for both rulemakers and legal scholars.

Antitrust Implications of Health Planning: National Gerimedical Hospital and Gerontology Center v. Blue Cross of Kansas City

1982 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-348
Author(s):  
Judy B. Chase
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Health Planning ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Health Care Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Planning Activity ◽  
Care Industry ◽  
Antitrust Laws

AbstractIn National Gerimedical Hospital and Gerontology Center v. Blue Cross of Kansas City, the United States Supreme Court held that there is no blanket exemption from antitrust laws for health planning activities.‘The Court also held that no specific immunity can be granted where the challenged health planning activity is not undertaken pursuant to a federal regulatory scheme. This Comment reviews the Court’s decision and concludes that the Court correctly determined that the challenged activities did not qualify for an exemption. The Comment also examines the implications of the Court's statement that, where Congress has manifested a belief that competition is ineffective in the health care industry, application of the antitrust laws should be modified. The Comment recommends that an intermediate review standard such as the “presumptive, incentive modifying approach” should be used by future courts in deciding whether the ineffectiveness of competition in a given area of health planning activity warrants immunity from antitrust scrutiny.

Extraterritorial Shrimps, NGOs and the WTO Appellate Body

1999 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asif H. Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Market Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consultation Process ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Wto Appellate Body ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

At the centre of the international trading order, under the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), lies a dispute-settlement system. This system offers a graduated conflict-resolution mechanism that begins with a consultation process; progresses to adjudication, through a panel system, and ends in an appellate process.1 Under this machinery, in October 1996 India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand (the complainants) requested joint consultations with the United States, regarding the US prohibition on the importation of certain shrimps and shrimp products caught with fishing technology considered by the United States adversely to affect the population of sea turtles—an endangered species under CITES.2 The US prohibition arose from section 609 of Public Law 101–1623 and associated regulations and judicial rulings (hereafter referred to as section 609). In a nutshell the complainants claimed denial of market access to their exports, and the United States justified this on grounds of conservation. However, as a consequence of the failure of the consultations, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body established a panel, around April 1997, to consider a joint complaint against the United States in relation to section 609. Australia, Ecuador, the European Communities, HongKong, China, Mexico and Nigeria joined the complainants as third parties. In May 1998 the panel's report was published, containing a decision in favour of the complainants. In July 1998 the United States appealed to the WTO Appellate Body, and in October 1998 the Appellate Body issued its report.4

(Mis)Information on Digital Platforms: Lessons from Twitter and Sina Weibo in the COVID-19 Pandemic (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kreps
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Relative Prevalence

BACKGROUND Misinformation about COVID-19 has presented challenges to public health authorities during pandemics. Understanding the prevalence and type of misinformation across contexts offers a way to understand the discourse around COVID-19 while informing potential countermeasures. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to study COVID-19 content on two prominent microblogging platform, Twitter, based in the United States, and Sina Weibo, based in China, and compare the content and relative prevalence of misinformation to better understand public discourse of public health issues across social media and cultural contexts. METHODS A total of 3,579,575 posts were scraped from both Weibo and Twitter, focusing on content from January 30th, 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” and February 6th, 2020. A 1% random sample of tweets that contained both the English keywords “coronavirus” and “covid-19” and the equivalent Chinese characters was extracted and analyzed based on changes in the frequencies of keywords and hashtags. Misinformation on each platform was compared by manually coding and comparing posts using the World Health Organization fact-check page to adjudicate accuracy of content. RESULTS Both platforms posted about the outbreak and transmission but posts on Sina Weibo were less likely to reference controversial topics such as the World Health Organization and death and more likely to cite themes of resisting, fighting, and cheering against the coronavirus. Misinformation constituted 1.1% of Twitter content and 0.3% of Weibo content. CONCLUSIONS Quantitative and qualitative analysis of content on both platforms points to cross-platform differences in public discourse surrounding the pandemic and informs potential countermeasures for online misinformation.

Antiracist Curriculum and Digital Platforms: Evidence from Black Lives Matter

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saharsh Agarwal ◽  
Ananya Sen
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Public School Teachers ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Null Effect ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we examine the impact of racially charged events on the demand for antiracist classroom resources in U.S. public schools. We use book requests made by teachers on DonorsChoose, the largest crowdfunding platform for public school teachers, as a measure of intent to address race-related topics in the classroom. We use the precise timing of high-profile police brutality and other racially charged events in the United States (2010–2020) to identify their effect on antiracism requests relative to a control group. We find a significant increase in antiracism requests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and a null effect for all other events in the decade. We also find an increase in requests for books featuring Latinx, Asian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures, suggesting that a focus on equality for one group can spill over and yield culturally aware dialogues for other groups as well. Event studies suggest that local protests played a role in motivating some of the teachers to post these requests. In just four months following George Floyd’s death, $3.4 million worth of books featuring authors and characters from marginalized communities were successfully funded, reaching more than half a million students. Text analysis of impact notes posted by teachers suggests that hundreds of thousands of young students are being engaged in discussions about positive affirmation and cross-cultural acceptance. This paper was accepted by D.J. Wu, information systems.

scholarly journals The Dawn for a New Antitrust Law Framework for Digital Platforms, Evidence from an Empirical Comparative Analysis of EU Antitrust Decisions

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 959-974
Author(s):  
Shahzada Aamir Mushtaq ◽  
Fariha Sabahat ◽  
Huma Rao
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Industrial Economy ◽  
Market Participants ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Consumer Data ◽  
Critical Resource

The Digital platforms are a unique creation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The digital economy may have replaced the industrial economy, but the rules created to oversee the fair operation of the industrial economy have not kept pace with that evolution. The digitalization of the economy with consumer data as a new critical resource is an advancement of a technological revolution which needs an adaptation of regulatory framework for markets and the world economy. This paper analyzed the privacy and data protection concerns in the digital economy from an economic perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises. The tech giants, by controlling user's data are exploiting it for their own commercial benefits and inflicting the threats to the privacy of users.  This paper intends to shed light that it's not enough to look for policy solutions only within the competition or data protection law. Rather an integrated move from various regulatory perspectives is necessary. Therefore, the article focuses that the formalistic approach to article 101 and 102 of TFEU (Treaty On The Functioning OF The European Union which the EU Commission usually adopted as an effects-based approach) to counter exploitative, exclusionary practices, and potential harm to consumers is efficacious to regulate the digital platforms. Furthermore, this research presses the necessity of how the abusive conduct of data-driven entrants be regularized by forwarding the new concepts of antitrust law and its effective enforcement across the globe. The digital platforms have fundamentally changed the ways we interact with news, with each other, and with governments and business. Digital platforms act as intermediaries which connect two or more market participants via the platform and simplify their interaction.

scholarly journals Tourism Discourse Revisited: An Analysis of Evaluative Strategies in Tourist Brochures from a Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Alireza Jalilifar ◽  
Yasamin Moradi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
Tourist Destinations ◽  
Statistical Variations ◽  
Verbal Content

Today, studying tourism discourse has become widespread among scholars in the field of text analysis. However, few, if any, studies which have addressed the language of tourism have examined the verbal content of travel brochures from the point of view of the appraisal model. The major questions addressed in this study pertain to Graduation strategies as part of appraisal strategies in the discourse of tourism as well as the lexico-grammatical resources for the coding of these strategies in texts. The dataset comprised 50 e-brochures released by tour operators across the United States within the period 2012 to 2013. First, the data were examined quantitatively to identify the statistical variations in utilizing Graduation strategies in tourist brochures. The preferences for lexico-grammatical resources for the construal of these strategies were also illustrated in light of a qualitative analysis. The results of the study revealed that the discourse of travel brochures is loaded with Graduation strategies. The subsystems within the system of Graduation were shown to serve as strong tools in promoting various aspects of tourist destinations such as the number and distribution of tourist sites over an area.

Saving the News

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Minow
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Accountability ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Private Industry ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government

This book argues that US democracy presumes a news industry but that industry currently is failing. It focuses on the contributions of digital platforms and legal rules to the current situation and on the government's responsibilities for alleviating the problem. As the book shows, the First Amendment of the US Constitution assumes the existence and durability of a private industry. Despite some concerns that government action now is not permitted, nothing in the Constitution forecloses government action to regulate concentrated economic power, to require disclosure of who is financing communications, or to support news initiatives where there are market failures. Moreover, the federal government always been involved in shaping the media environment; it has contributed financial resources, laws, and regulations to develop and shape media in the United States. The government has subsidized development of the internet and crafted legal immunities for digital platforms; the government has crafted the direction and contours of America's media ecosystem. The shift of people’s attention to media platforms that borrow news stories without paying for them and spread misinformation jeopardizes journalism, reliable news sources, and the very respect for truth-telling. To maintain government accountability and inform a public as required in a democracy, The book outlines an array of reforms, including a new fairness doctrine, regulating digital platforms as public utilities, using antitrust authority to regulate the media, policing fraud, and more robust funding of public media. As the text stresses, such reforms are not merely plausible ideas; they are the kinds of initiatives needed if the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press continues to hold meaning in the twenty-first century.

The Global White Snake as Digital Activist Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-124
Author(s):  
Liang Luo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Green Card ◽  
Permanent Resident ◽  
Resident Alien ◽  
Human World ◽  
Contemporary United States

There is a long oral tradition and written record for the legend of the White Snake. As a woman, her “original sin” is being a snake. She is a snake who has cultivated herself for hundreds, if not thousands, of years to attain the form of a beautiful woman. Living as a resident “alien” (yilei) in the “Human Realm” (renjian), the White Snake has always been treated with suspicion, fear, exclusion, and violent suppression/exorcism. The White Snake is an immigrant to the human world, whose serpentine identity made her a “resident alien,” the legal category given to immigrants in the United States before they receive their “Green Card” and become a “permanent resident.” The implication of being a snake woman in the human world took on new meanings when the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the existing xenophobia, fear, and suspicion toward minority populations in the contemporary United States and throughout the world. Inspired by the Chinese White Snake legend, the three Anglophone opera, film, and stage projects from Cerise Lim Jacobs, Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri, and Mary Zimmerman, energetically engage with issues relevant to minority activism in the United States and more broadly, through digital media and digital platforms.

Cost Containment in the Health Care Field and the Antitrust Laws

1982 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-435
Author(s):  
David I. Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
Care Field ◽  
Antitrust Analysis ◽  
Care Costs

AbstractThe Supreme Court of the United States and other courts currently are considering the question of the extent to which the health care field should be subject to antitrust rules. This Article explores the special characteristics of the health care field, and the problems they create for antitrust analysis. Two current cases—Arizona v. Maricopa County Medical Society (awaiting decision by the Supreme Court) and Kartell v. Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Inc. (pending in the District of Massachusetts)—illustrate the issues raised by efforts to contain health care costs through the setting of maximum fees. This Article suggests that traditional antitrust principles should and will prevail over arguments that such restraints are in the public interest.

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