For this Leibniz Media Lunch Talk we welcome
Rachel Griffin und
Naomi Appelman. In their presentations they will talk about "Inclusion and Exclusion in Social Media Governance".
Martin Fertmann will provide the introduction. The event will be held in English.
Time
12:30 to 13:30 p.m. CEST
Registration
The event will take place online on Zoom. After registration you will receive the dial-in data by mail shortly before the event starts.
About the Presentations
Rachel Griffin: Rethinking Rights in Social Media Governance: Human Rights, Ideology and Inequality
This talk aims to question the dominance of human rights as the primary normative framework for EU social media law and academic critiques thereof, focusing particularly on their usefulness in addressing structural social inequalities in the media. As a legal framework, human rights fail to address collective issues like platforms’ influence on culture and social norms, and favour individualistic remedies like content removal appeals, which overlook collective interests and cannot even offer effective, equal protection to individuals. In political discourse, the individualistic and seemingly apolitical language of human rights can legitimise corporate activities, while downplaying questions about the political economy of this privatised, concentrated, advertiser-funded industry.
Naomi Appelman: Content Moderation through an Agonistic Lens: Contesting Online Exclusion
The centralised control that platforms have over online speech and the disparate effects of their content moderation policies on vulnerable groups have proven to be a persistent societal challenge. This talk will use agonistic democratic theory as a lens to analyse content moderation and chart out new directions for European regulation of online speech. The main claim that follows from this agonistic lens is that in order to minimise online exclusion and to democratise content moderation, these sociotechnical systems should be made more contestable. How people can concretely contest content moderation systems will be discussed based on a more detailed analysis of the power structures present on these platforms.
About the Speakers
Rachel Griffin is a PhD candidate and lecturer in law at Sciences Po. Her research focuses on European social media regulation and its implications for structural social inequalities. Her research draws on a range of interdisciplinary literature to understand how structural inequalities manifest in the context of social media, and is informed by perspectives from political economy, critical race theory, and queer and feminist legal theory. She also works as a research assistant at the Digital, Governance & Sovereignty Chair within Sciences Po’s School of Public Affairs, and teaches a course on social media law at Sciences Po Reims.
Naomi Appelman is a PhD researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam and a visiting researcher at the HIIG focussing on online speech regulation and platform governance. She has studied both law (majoring in information and media law) and political philosophy (majoring in democratic theory and STS) at the University of Amsterdam as well as briefly at Keio University, Tokyo. Her interdisciplinary PhD research is on the contestability of algorithmic online speech governance. She combines information law with political philosophy (agonistic democratic theory) to asks how European law should facilitate the contestability of the automated content moderation systems governing online speech. Further, Naomi has previously done volunteer work at a digital rights NGO and is one of the founders of the NGO Racism and Technology Center.
Rachel Griffin and Naomi Appelman are participants in the HBI-GIG-ARTS Emerging Scholars Network, an initiative launched by the HBI to promote young scholars and build networks among doctoral students whose submissions were accepted for this year's
GIG-ARTS conference. The network is coordinated by Martin Fertmann.
Leibniz Media Lunch Talks
At the Leibniz Media Lunch Talks, researchers present current topics, interim results from their research projects or doctoral projects in a relaxed atmosphere. You are welcome to enjoy your lunch alongside the talk.
