Call for papers: Disinformation and Digital Media as a Challenge for Democracy

Hrag Vartanian 2017 CC BY-ND 2.0 via flickr.com

The call for papers for the upcoming 6th volume in European Integration and Democracy series, devoted to challenges for democracy, the rule of law and the respect for fundamental rights, posed by contemporary disinformation practices and digital media, has now been published [PDF 247 KB].

The planned book is a joint endeavour of the Centre for Direct Democracy Studies (CDDS) at the Faculty of Law of the University of Białystok, Poland, the Research Group on Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium and the Department of Media and Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), the Netherlands. The book will be published by Intersentia in mid-2019 under co-editorship of Elżbieta Kużelewska (CDDS), Georgios Terzis (VUB), Daniel Trottier (EUR) and Dariusz Kloza (VUB-LSTS).

This book is motivated, to a large extent, by the recent developments in information, misinformation and disinformation practices. From the beginning of history, various and diverse means or channels of communication have been employed to inform, misinform (unintentionally) and disinform (deliberately); the book will focus mainly on the last of these practices, frequently labelled ‘fake news’. Yet, in recent decades, the emergence and progress of new information and communications technologies (ICT), combined with the ever more increasing digitalisation and globalisation of almost every aspect of modern life, have opened new and uncharted avenues to that end. The 2016 referendum on the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union (the so-called ‘Brexit’) and the presidential elections in the United States – and related, alleged disinformation practices – are perhaps the strongest reminder of the importance and power of disinformation in society. These developments, in turn, bring about profound ramifications for the very existence and functioning of a democratic polity. In particular, they affect the values and principles on which the European integration project as well as many other Western democratic polities have been built: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) and respect for human rights, among others. These democratic polities are only at an early stage of understanding the implications of disinformation practices and digital media. Therefore, the relations between democracy and these practices merit critical analysis and academic attention.

The book will take a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, analysing the subject-matter from the diverse viewpoints of philosophy, ethics, law, history, political science, economy, business management, sociology, psychology, geography, linguistics, computer science, journalism and media studies, science and technology studies (STS), among others. In addition, comparative analyses are strongly encouraged.

The deadline for submitting an extended abstract is 30 June 2018 and, upon acceptance, full submissions will be due by 15 October 2018.

Advertisements

10 Years of ‘Profiling the European Citizen’: Slow Science Seminar 12-13 June 2018, Brussels City Campus

Organised by: Emre Bayamlioglu, Irina Baraliuc, Liisa Janssens, Mireille Hildebrandt

2018 marks the 10th anniversary of ‘Profiling the European Citizen’ (ed. Mireille Hildebrandt and Serge Gutwirth), which brought together lawyers, computer scientists and philosophers around emerging practices of data mining, knowledge discovery in data bases (KDD) and their application in a variety of domains.

The title of the book turns out to have been prophetic, touching upon a series of implications of what has now been coined as the micro targeting of individuals as consumers and citizens, based on machine learning and AB testing.

To celebrate – or even to mourn – the relevance of the volume, LSTS is organizing a seminar to reflect on current affairs and further implications. In two days we will engage with 24 provocations by an awe-inspiring line-up of lawyers, computer scientists, philosophers and social scientists. Focus is on 6 themes that will hopefully induce both deep thinking and a challenging cross-disciplinary conversation:

1. Theories of normativity between law and machine learning
Sylvie Delacroix, Patrick Allo, Seda Guerses, Emre Bayamlioglu
2. Transparency theory for data driven decision making
Karen Yeung, Anton Vedder, Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Gloria Gonzalez Fuster
3. Presumption of innocence in data driven government
Lucia Sommerer, Linnet Taylor, Tobias Blanke, Sabine Gless
4. Legal and political theory in data driven environments
Orla Lynskey, Ben Wagner, Arjen de Vries, Irina Baraliuc
5. Saving machine learning from p-hacking
Antoinette Rouvroy, Felix Stalder, Clare Gollnick, Mireille Hildebrandt
6. The legal and ML status of micro targeting
Bart Custers, Serge Gutwirth, Reuben Binns, Niels van Dijk

Though this is largely an author meets author seminar, some space is open for attendance. Please register with irina.baraliuc@vub.be.

Taming the Future

pic by glgfuster (@flickr)

On Monday 23 April 2018 LSTS researcher Rosamunde van Brakel will publicly defend her PhD thesis ‘Taming The Future: A Rhizomatic Analysis of the Unintended Consequences of Pre-Emptive Surveillance of Children’. The defence will take place in Room D.2.01 (VUB Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus) at 13:00. Please find the official invitation here (pdf).

3rd European Data Protection Law Summer School

pic by evan lavine (@flickr)

Between 25 and 29 June 2018 will take place at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) the 3rd European Data Protection Law Summer School, organised by the Brussels Privacy Hub (BPH). Under the title ‘Putting the GDPR into Practice & in Context‘, it will equip participants to adequately tackle the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and prepare them for the many challenges ahead in the field of data protection and e-privacy. Early bird registration is possible until 30 March 2018. More information, including the list of confirmed lecturers, can be found here.

IRIS 2018: The automation of privacy- and data protection impact assessments

In line with an established tradition that the members of VUB-LSTS partake in the Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion IRIS, our Brussels Laboratory for Data Protection & Privacy Impact Assessments (d.pia.lab) will organise – at the upcoming, 21st edition of the IRIS conference – a panel dedicated to the automation of privacy- and data protection impact assessments. The panel will take place on Friday, 23 February 2018 from 16:00 till 17:30 in Salzburg, Austria and will be held in English.

robot! by iwouldificould

It is well known that the new legal framework for personal data protection in the European Union, applicable from May 2018, brings to the fore a plethora of novel solutions aiming, inter alia, at better safeguarding the interests of individuals whenever their personal data are being handled. One of these novelties is an obligation imposed on data controllers to conduct a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) for those processing operations that could present a “high risk” to the “rights and freedoms of natural persons”. Despite these novelties still posing questions as to their practical application, they already have caused development of dedicated guidance material, templates, tools, etc. – all aimed at making possible and facilitating their usage, including the conduct of a DPIA.

LSTS: 15 years of science and fun

The Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) celebrates in 2018 its 15 years of existence. To mark the occasion, we invite all our friends to join us at a special LSTS-café on Tuesday 27th February 2018 at La Tricoterie, from 8:30 pm to 2:00 am, with music selection by DJ Soeur Veillance and DJ Götz Von Berlichingen. The bar will sell drinks. Please find the invitation  here.

Teaching Data Driven Law

This February (2018) LSTS prof. Mireille Hildebrandt will teach an ‘intensive course’ at University of Toronto, Faculty of Law on Data Driven Law. The course will build on her explorations of the entanglements between law and smart technologies, inquiring further into the impact of data-driven environments on democracy, law and the Rule of Law.

The course will investigate machine learning (ML) as a novel way to detect, identify and construct knowledge, taking ML seriously as a scientific discipline with its own methodological loyalties and its own specific requirements of methodological integrity. On the menu will be, amongst others, law as information, the relationship between law, democracy and the Rule of Law, ML and data protection law, issues of criminal law, jurisdiction and law as computation under the Rule of Law.

Core questions will be: how shall we move beyond the assumed trade-off between ML accuracy and ML interpretability? which characteristics of the Rule of Law must be reinvented in a data driven environment? how does the capture of behavioural data transform our autonomy? should we admit to eschatological expectations of deep learning? or should we? what does this mean for the trade of lawyers? and what does it mean for their profession? how does automation of decisions in the realm of criminal law affect core principles such as the presumption of innocence? will distributed ledger technologies ‘freeze the future’ or will they set us free? how will the regulatory state transform in the era of data driven anyware? shall we figure out ways and means to embed legal and democratic values in the architecture of artificial legal intelligence? And much more.