Want to defend democracy? Start with your public library

Washington Post Opinion: “In “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” the character Ron — channeling his friend Hermione — says to Harry Potter: “When in doubt, go to the library.” In the United States today, there is plenty to doubt. Complex arguments are being whittled down to 280 characters.
And of course, the president has made more than 5,000 false or misleading statements in about 600 days. Just last week, he falsely claimed that 3,000 Puerto Ricans “did not die in the two hurricanes.” Lies have become too commonplace in the United States, so the American people need a place where they can go to get the truth. Ron is right. Go to your public library. Public libraries provide information in an era of misinformation. They offer facts and nuance. They offer the opportunity for enlightenment. They offer every visitor the resources they need to find answers. The American Library Association reports that many public libraries are, for instance, “developing programs to help community members spot ‘fake news’ and evaluate information online.”…


Cram, Ian and Fenwick, Helen, Protecting Free Speech and Academic Freedom in Universities (September 2018). The Modern Law Review, Vol. 81, Issue 5, pp. 825-873, 2018. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3245459 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12366




“Digital disinformation poses a grave threat to our democracy and demands a new social contract between consumers and internet companies that is rooted in transparency, privacy and competition, according to a new report co-published by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and New America, the Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank. The report, titled “Digital Deceit II: A Policy Agenda to Fight Disinformation on the Internet,” argues for the codification of a set of digital rights into public law encompassing a set of regulations designed to advance democratic values and protect the public from disinformation while fostering open digital markets…The report outlines a sweeping policy framework that would address the digital threat to democracy, focused on three key principles:

• Ad Transparency – As citizens, we have a right to know who is trying to influence our political views and how they are doing it. There must be explicit disclosure about the operation of such advertising and the content curation processes on dominant digital media platforms. We must have disclosure in the form of real-time and archived information about targeted political advertising, clear accountability for the social impact of automated decision-making, and explicit indicators for the presence of non-human accounts in digital media.
• Privacy – As individuals with the right to personal autonomy, we must be given more control over how our data is collected, used and monetized, particularly when it comes to sensitive information that shapes political decision-making. A baseline data privacy law must include consumer control over data through stronger rights to access and removal, transparency for the user of the full extent of data usage and meaningful consent, and stronger enforcement with resources and authority for agency rule-making.
• Competition – As consumers, we must have meaningful options to find, send and receive information over digital media. The rise of dominant digital platforms demonstrates how market structure influences social and political outcomes. A new competition policy agenda should include stronger oversight of mergers and acquisitions, antitrust reform and robust data portability and interoperability between services…”

Center for Data Innovation: “Mapping the Relationship Between Geography and Social Networks – The New York Times has created a series of maps illustrating how connected each county in the United States is to the rest of the nation based on Facebook connections. The maps color-code each county based on the number of Facebook friends its residents have outside its county, creating an index of social interaction. The maps demonstrate interesting relationships between geography and social spheres, such as how old historic migration patterns often mirror counties’ connections. For example, Chicago has significant connections to counties along the Mississippi River, where people migrated from during the Great Migration. Additionally, the maps show that while 63 percent of an individual’s Facebook friends lived within 100 miles of them in the average county, counties with more dispersed networks are richer, more educated, and have a longer life expectancy.”

• Take a look.

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