The Indonesian Electronic Information and Transactions Within Indonesia’s Broader Legal Regime: Urgency for Amendment?

Cyberspace is the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures such as the internet, telecommunications networks, and computer systems. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s Law Number 11 of 2008 and its amendment through Indonesian Law Number 19 of 2016 governing cyberspace have been viewed to contradict and infringe other areas of law, such as protection of press or freedom of expression. Hence, this study seeks to identify the controversies and problems regarding the law deemed urgent for amendment. Further, this study creates recommendations so the government may amend electronic information policy more fairly and efficiently. This study uses a judicial normative and comparative approach. This research tries to analyze the existing regulations and the implementation and compare Indonesia’s cyberspace regulation with other States’. This study finds that Articles 27(3) and 28(2) of the law criminalize defamation and hate speech in an overly broad manner and that Article 40(2)(b) allows the government to exercise problematic censorship. As a result, they have infringed the freedom of the press and general freedom of expression in practice. In response to this, this study compares similar provisions from other States and recommends amendment the articles to become narrower and more clearly defined.

Use of North Korea-Related YouTube Videos in South Korea: A Case Study of VideoMug

South Koreans have been producing social media content that sharply divided between conservative and progressive perspectives. This study analyzes a YouTube video clip during a South-North summit and then expands its scope to include the entire set of North Korea-related videos. The video was accused on the presidential petition website of violating South Korea's National Security Law. Despite sparking a debate on the suitability of the video's content among YouTube viewers, the petition did not attract much attention from the general public. Using this clip as a basis, we examine how YouTubers show interest in, reactions to, and engagement with North Korea-related media content using several network metrics and visualizations. Our analysis includes extensive background on South Korea's information policy toward North Korea. Based on our findings, we recommend that the South Korean government use cognitive and communication-oriented profiling-based input when formulating their information policy toward North Korea.

Hypernet Model of Media Communication: new qualities of risks for children

The technologically determined hyperbolic growth of communicative connectivity and the imperfection of administrative mechanisms of control over this process lead to an emergence of new phenomena and new risks, including risks in relation to the most vulnerable social group – children. The article proposes a new approach to describing the nature of the risks of the media space in relation to the health and development of children. Minimization of these risks is defined by the author as the goal of ensuring the information security of children. New qualities of risks are described on the basis of a hypernet model of media communication and developed on the basis of the hypernetwork brain theory. The author specifies the properties of hypernet education and their riskiness, mediated by the network morphology of connections, which implies the impossibility or ineffectiveness of the application of customary management practices. The vulnerability of the child group to these risks stem from the psychological immaturity. The importance of the phenomenalization of “media” and “information” is noted for the purposes of information policy and security – media security. The article reveals the tendencies of the media hypernetwork that increase the risks, especially the growth in the speed and volume of information transfer provided by technologies, which excludes the action of the well-known mechanisms for regulating the circulation of information and filtering content.

National interests of the state and the possibility of restricting the right to freedom of speech: the question of correlation

The article examines the possibility of restricting the right to freedom of speech in order to protect the national interests of the state. An analysis of normative legal acts prohibiting the dissemination of destructive information, such as calls for a violent change in the constitutional order of Ukraine, the outbreak of aggressive war, incitement to national, racial or religious hatred, etc. The right to freedom of expression is not absolute and may be limited. The article substantiates the criteria for state intervention in the information sphere, which allow limiting the dissemination of destructive information and preserving democratic values. Such criteria include the legality of the procedure, the legality of the purpose and the minimum amount of intervention. The article considers the existing mechanisms in Ukraine to respond to harmful informational influences. The law provides for liability for disseminating false information at several levels: civil, administrative and criminal. At the same time, these mechanisms are insufficient, as the concepts of «misinformation», «fake», etc. are not normatively defined. The article describes the state policy to combat destructive information influence. The bases of activity of state bodies created for the purpose of counteraction to dissemination of misinformation and propaganda are considered, namely the Center of counteraction of misinformation at Council of National Security and Defense of Ukraine and the Center of Strategic Communications and Information Security at the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy. The strategies of the state on counteraction to harmful information influence are analyzed. The Doctrine of Information Security of Ukraine is considered, which clarifies the basics of the state information policy in the direction of counteracting the destructive information influence of the Russian Federation in the conditions of the hybrid war unleashed by it. The main provisions of the Information Security Strategy, which defines the general principles of information security, are also considered. The strategies of the state on counteraction to harmful information influence are analyzed. The Doctrine of Information Security of Ukraine is considered, which clarifies the basics of the state information policy in the direction of counteracting the destructive information influence of the Russian Federation in the conditions of the hybrid war unleashed by it. The main provisions of the Information Security Strategy, which defines the general principles of information security, are also considered.

“Sputnik V” and the information policy of the European media regarding the Russian means of combating the pandemic

The article analyzes the public political reactions of the leaders of the European Union and the leading political forces of various European states regarding the Russian “Sputnik V” vaccine. The position of key European states in relation to the Russian vaccine are considered. This study is based on open sources and does not provide a comprehensive or complete overview of the available estimates. It focuses mainly on the problems of information support of political decisions regarding Russian means of combating the coronavirus pandemic. The refusal of the European Commission to recognize the Europeans’ right to use the Russian “Sputnik V” vaccine suggests that ideological prejudice and protectionism are put ahead of pragmatism and public health.

Engineering Social Learning: Information Design of Time-Locked Sales Campaigns for Online Platforms

Many online platforms offer time-locked sales campaigns, whereby products are sold at fixed prices for prespecified lengths of time. Platforms often display some information about previous customers’ purchase decisions during campaigns. Using a dynamic Bayesian persuasion framework, we study how a revenue-maximizing platform should optimize its information policy for such a setting. We reformulate the platform’s problem equivalently by reducing the dimensionality of its message space and proprietary history. Specifically, three messages suffice: a neutral recommendation that induces a customer to make her purchase decision according to her private signal about the product and a positive (respectively (resp.), negative) recommendation that induces her to purchase (resp., not purchase) by ignoring her signal. The platform’s proprietary history can be represented by the net purchase position, a single-dimensional summary statistic that computes the cumulative difference between purchases and nonpurchases made by customers having received the neutral recommendation. Subsequently, we establish structural properties of the optimal policy and uncover the platform’s fundamental trade-off: long-term information (and revenue) generation versus short-term revenue extraction. Further, we propose and optimize over a class of heuristic policies. The optimal heuristic policy provides only neutral recommendations up to a cutoff customer and provides only positive or negative recommendations afterward, with the recommendation being positive if and only if the net purchase position after the cutoff customer exceeds a threshold. This policy is easy to implement and numerically shown to perform well. Finally, we demonstrate the generality of our methodology and the robustness of our findings by relaxing some informational assumptions. This paper was accepted by Gabriel Weintraub, revenue management and market analytics.

Remembering “Andy” Aines: A look back at his call for a national STI policy

A commemoration is presented of the passing 25 years ago of Andrew A. Aines, a pioneer and staunch advocate for a rational national information policy and approach to the dissemination of scientific and technical information. Included in this recognition of his efforts is information on an unfinished manuscript of major proportions covering the post-World War II efforts to create such a national policy. This manuscript includes a detailed history of the establishment and evolution of the Committee on Scientific and Technical Information (COSATI) and is available on the Internet Archive.