Democracy & Digital Societies

Europe and Canada can only protect their digital ecosystems against US interference if they start investing in tech sovereignty now.

Online violence is a global issue affecting women, activists, and marginalized groups. Pirth.org supports survivors with personalized resources and advocates for greater transparency and accountability online, addressing the need for a safer digital space.

A reflection on the process of mapping the industry of high tech surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border

The upcoming European Parliament elections are set to be a critical test in the fight against disinformation. With new regulations and AI challenges, how will Europe ensure election integrity?

Not even ten years after being mentioned for the very first time, feminist foreign policy has made it into the political mainstream: the guidelines ‘Shaping a Feminist Foreign Policy’ of the German Federal Foreign Office outline a strategic shift in German foreign politics. At the same time, digital policy has become more and more international.

Social media in Ukraine: how advocates and historians use it

TikTok is the new Facebook for midterm candidates reaching out to Gen Z voters as the entertainment platform is turning into a forum for political debate. Its success has not only exposed the app to public scrutiny of reported failures to contain misinformation, but it has also raised national security concerns over its Chinese ownership.

Determined to stay in power, Brazil’s incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro borrows from Donald Trump’s playbook and is preparing the ground for a stolen election myth. He rose to power by learning how to mobilize voters from Barack Obama – and by flooding the internet with fake news.

A Bill of Rights for the AI-enabled world, regulatory challenges, and socio-technical risks: Jessica Newman, who leads the AI Security Initiative at UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, discusses recent AI developments in the United States and Europe with our Transatlantic Media Fellow Ekaterina Venkina in an interview for BigData-Insider.

Thomas Neubert has lived in Silicon Valley for 30 years. At Intel in Santa Clara, he works with third-party startups to drive the transition to new technologies. He is co-founder and acting chairman of the German American Business Association of California. He sat down with our fellow Ekaterina Venkina for an interview in BigData-Insider on what the AI “mega shift” means for Germany’s business ecosystem.

How do we preserve our humanity in a world of intelligent machines? AI researcher Mark Nitzberg on the need to build AI models that are safe for humans and make explainable decisions – and why standards and oversight are key.  Our fellow Ekaterina Venkina interviewed the Executive Director at the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley (CHAI) for RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).

This backgrounder introduces readers to the research literature on AI’s impact on democracy. It surveys literature in three distinct areas: AI and the democratic public sphere, the impact of AI on election campaigns, and the importance and accountability of automated decision-making systems in public services.

2022 is shaping up to be a big year for European digital policymaking. The Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts as well as the Artificial Intelligence Act will reverberate beyond the EU’s borders. For the EU’s comprehensive vision for platform regulation to become reality, it will be crucial to coordinate the enforcement mechanisms of these laws.

Germany’s mainstream political parties and their candidates led a remarkably civilized campaign in the digital age, avoiding U.S.-style political polarization. Even so, hate speech and disinformation on social media played a role in diverting public attention away from policy issues to personal attacks in an election that should been about shaping a path for Germany’s future.

The increasing data-driven nature of societies raises concerns about how to prevent data misuse and abuse that may harm individuals and communities, particularly marginalized groups. A feminist critique of the model law on data protection of the Southern African Development Community and the EU’s GDPR, however highlights the dangerous gaps that place women and gender-diverse people at risk.

"Algorithmic misogynoir in content moderation practice" from Brandeis Marshall, offers an intersectional perspective by exploring the discrimination specifically faced by Black women in the United States.

"The state of content moderation for the LGBTIQA+ community and the role of the EU Digital Services Act" by researcher Christina Dinar, focuses on the challenges faced by the queer community in Europe and offers detailed recommendations for the forthcoming EU Digital Services Act.

On the EU’s periphery, Serbia has deployed enough biometric surveillance technology from China’s Huawei for law enforcement and “Safe City” solutions to cover practically all of Belgrade’s public spaces. Public pressure has raised the bar for turning on the technology, but the alarming project illustrates the need for transparent regulation of such systems everywhere, to ensure the protection of fundamental human rights.

The wording in the EU's draft AI legislation is strong, but Chander from European Digital Rights (EDRi) says the proposal ultimately centers the needs of businesses instead of people.

To get the transatlantic relationship back and on track and to ensure that it will remain relevant in the future, the United States and the European Union should prioritize putting forward concrete ideas and taking actionable steps on climate and energy, democracy and human rights, and digital technology issues.