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Under what conditions can artificial intelligence contribute to political processes without undermining their legitimacy? Thanks to the ever-growing availability of data and the increasing power of decision-making algorithms, the future of political institutions is unlikely to be anything similar to what we have known throughout the last century, possibly with parliaments deprived of their traditional authority and public decision-making processes largely unaccountable. This paper discusses and challenges these concerns by suggesting a theoretical framework under which algorithmic decision-making is compatible with democracy and, most relevantly, can offer a viable solution to counter the rise of populist rhetoric in the governance arena. Such a framework is based on three pillars: (1) understanding the civic issues that are subjected to automated decision-making; (2) controlling the issues that are assigned to AI; and (3) evaluating and challenging the outputs of algorithmic decision-making.

This article aims to discuss the impact of the expansion of the country of origin principle to video-sharing digital platforms, and how this contributes to a new paradigm of centralized governance of online media content in Europe. Compared to other jurisdictional regimes in the fields of data protection, intellectual property and personality rights, where other country of receipt and targeting tests are utilized, the case of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) demonstrates the emergence of a split governance model between individual rights and public interests, which fails to protect adequately local cultural and social specificities in the media sphere.

Objective: The emergency operations center (EOC) is an essential component of modern emergency management. Traditionally understood as a place where officials communicate with the public, support coordination, manage operations, craft policy, gather information, and host visitors; there has been little recent research on their structure, operations, or work procedures. EOCs may in fact be, as we argue here, places where emergency managers come to find workarounds, delegate tasks, and find new sources of expertise in order to make sense, make meaning, and make decisions. However, despite their status as a symbol of emergency management and recipients of large amounts of funding, there has been relatively little scientific research into the EOC. With this paper, we synthesize the existing research and propose a variety of research questions to accelerate the process of inquiry into the EOC.Design: Informed by an extensive literature review, this article presents a comprehensive look at the existing state of knowledge surrounding EOCs.Interventions: Research questions to support investigation of the EOC are suggested.Conclusions: The EOC is an underexplored setting ripe for development and discovery by researchers and emergency managers seeking to influence the field of emergency management.

The European Union’s (EU) strategy to address the spread of disinformation, and most notably the Code of Practice on Disinformation and the forthcoming Digital Services Act, tasks digital platforms with a range of actions to minimise the distribution of issue-based and political adverts that are verifiably false or misleading. This article discusses the implications of the EU’s approach with a focus on its categorical approach, specifically what it means to conceptualise disinformation as a form of advertisement and by what standards digital platforms are expected to assess the truthful or misleading nature of the content that they distribute because of this categorisation. The analysis will show how the emerging EU anti-disinformation framework marks a departure from the European Court of Human Rights’ consolidated standards of review for public interest and commercial speech and the tests utilised to assess their accuracy.

The EU Code of Conduct on hate speech requires online platforms to set standards to regulate the blocking or removal of undesirable content. The standards chosen can be analysed for four variables: the scope of protection, the form of speech, the nature of harm, and the likelihood of harm. Comparing the platforms' terms of use against existing legal standards for hate speech reveals that the scope of speech that may be removed increases significantly under the Code's mechanism. Therefore, it is legitimate to consider the platforms as substantive regulators of speech. However, the Code is only the latest example in a global trend of platforms' activities affecting both the substantive regulation of speech and its governance. Meanwhile, States' authority to set standards of acceptable speech wanes.

The emergency operations center (EOC) is an essential component of modern emergency management. Traditionally understood as a place where officials communicate with the public, support coordination, manage operations, craft policy, gather information, and host visitors; there has been little recent research on their structure, operations, or work procedures. EOCs may in fact be, as we argue here, places where emergency managers come to find workarounds, delegate tasks, and find new sources of expertise in order to make sense, make meaning, and make decisions. However, despite their status as a symbol of emergency management and recipients of large amounts of funding, there has been relatively little scientific research into the EOC. With this paper, we synthesize the existing research and propose a variety of research questions to accelerate the process of inquiry into the EOC.Informed by an extensive literature review, this article presents a comprehensive look at the existing state of knowledge surrounding EOCs.Research questions to support investigation of the EOC are suggested.The EOC is an underexplored setting ripe for development and discovery by researchers and emergency managers seeking to influence the field of emergency management.

This article claims that the practices undertaken by digital platforms to counter disinformation, under the EU Action Plan against Disinformation and the Code of Practice, mark a shift in the governance of news media content. While professional journalism standards have been used for long, both within and outside the industry, to assess the accuracy of news content and adjudicate on media conduct, the platforms are now resolving to different fact-checking routines to moderate and curate their content. The article will demonstrate how fact-checking organisations have different working methods than news operators and ultimately understand and assess ‘accuracy’ in different ways. As a result, this new and enhanced role for platforms and fact-checkers as curators of content impacts on how content is distributed to the audience and, thus, on media freedom. Depending on how the fact-checking standards and working routines will consolidate in the near future, however, this trend offers an actual opportunity to improve the quality of news and the right to receive information.

This latest book by Eric Barendt is at the same time an in-depth study of a complex topic and an engaging and pleasant-to-read excursus on the various meanings that societies have attached to the v...

Case C‑18/18 Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v Facebook Ireland Limited, Judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union (Third Chamber) of 3 October 2019Article 15(1) of the E-Commerce Directive does not preclude a court of a Member State from: ordering a host provider to remove or block access to information identical to the content of information previously declared unlawful; ordering a host provider to remove or block access to information equivalent to information previously declared unlawful, provided that the content remains essentially unchanged and the differences in the wording are not such as to require the host provider to carry out an independent assessment beyond the elements specified in the injunction; ordering a host provider to remove or block access to information covered by the injunction worldwide within the framework of the relevant international law.Recitals 6, 7, 9, 10, 40, 41, 45 to 48, 52, 58 and 60; Articles 14, 15(1) and 18(1) of Directive 2000/31 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (‘Directive on electronic commerce’) [2000] OJ L 178/1

Article 15(1) of the E-Commerce Directive does not preclude a court of a Member State from: ordering a host provider to remove or block access to information identical to the content of information previously declared unlawful; ordering a host provider to remove or block access to information equivalent to information previously declared unlawful, provided that the content remains essentially unchanged and the differences in the wording are not such as to require the host provider to carry out an independent assessment beyond the elements specified in the injunction; ordering a host provider to remove or block access to information covered by the injunction worldwide within the framework of the relevant international law.

Public participation in environmental management, and more specifically in hazard mitigation planning, has received much attention from scholars and practitioners. A shift in perspective now sees the public as a fundamental player in decision-making rather than simply as the final recipient of a policy decision. Including the public in hazard mitigation planning brings widespread benefits. First, communities gain awareness of the risks they live with, and thus, this is an opportunity to empower communities and improve their resilience. Second, supported by a collaborative participation process, emergency managers and planners can achieve the ultimate goal of strong mitigation plans. Although public participation is highly desired as an instrument to improve hazard mitigation planning, appropriate participation techniques are context dependent and some trade-offs exist in the process design (such as between representativeness and consensus building). Designing participation processes requires careful planning and an all-around consideration of the representativeness of stakeholders, timing, objectives, knowledge, and ultimately desired goals to achieve. Assessing participation also requires more consistent methods to facilitate policy learning from diverse experiences. New decision-support tools may be necessary to gain widespread participation from laypersons lacking technical knowledge of hazards and risks.