35,882 research outputs found
Can electoral popularity be predicted using socially generated big data?
Today, our more-than-ever digital lives leave significant footprints in
cyberspace. Large scale collections of these socially generated footprints,
often known as big data, could help us to re-investigate different aspects of
our social collective behaviour in a quantitative framework. In this
contribution we discuss one such possibility: the monitoring and predicting of
popularity dynamics of candidates and parties through the analysis of socially
generated data on the web during electoral campaigns. Such data offer
considerable possibility for improving our awareness of popularity dynamics.
However they also suffer from significant drawbacks in terms of
representativeness and generalisability. In this paper we discuss potential
ways around such problems, suggesting the nature of different political systems
and contexts might lend differing levels of predictive power to certain types
of data source. We offer an initial exploratory test of these ideas, focussing
on two data streams, Wikipedia page views and Google search queries. On the
basis of this data, we present popularity dynamics from real case examples of
recent elections in three different countries.Comment: To appear in Information Technolog
A Portrait of the Internet as a Young Man
In brief, the core theory of Jonathan Zittrainâs1 2008 book The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It is this: good laws, norms, and code are needed to regulate the Internet, to prevent bad laws, norms, and code from compromising its creative capabilities and fettering its fecund flexibility. A far snarkier if less alliterative summary would be âWe have to regulate the Internet to preserve its open, unregulated nature.â Zittrain posits that either a substantive series of unfortunate Internet events or one catastrophic one will motivate governments to try to regulate cyberspace in a way that promotes maximum stability, which will inhibit or possibly even preclude future technological innovations that rely on open access to the tools and systems that comprise the Internet. To head this off, he calls for a âtransition to a networking infrastructure that is more secure yet roughly as dynamic as the current one,â which will be achieved by collaborative efforts, âa 21st century international Manhattan Project which brings together people of good faith in government, academia, and the private sector for the purpose of shoring up the miraculous information technology grid that is too easy to take for granted and whose seeming self-maintenance has led us into an undue complacence.â Zittrain uses brief, informal accounts of past events to build two main theories that dominate the book. First, he claims that open access, which he calls generativity, is under threat by a trend toward closure, which he refers to as tetheredness, which is counterproductively favored by proprietary entities. Though consumers prefer openness and the autonomy it confers, few take advantage of the opportunities it provides, and therefore undervalue it and too readily cede it in favor of the promise of security that tetheredness brings. Second, he argues that if the Internet is to find salvation it will be by the grace of âtrue netizens,â volunteers acting collectively in good faith to cultivate positive social norms online. Zittrain is a creative thinker and entertaining speaker, and his book is engaging and informative in much the same ways that his talks are, loaded with pop culture references and allegorical tales about technology and the once and future Internet. Zittrain uses numerous anecdotes to support his dual hypotheses, exhaustively affirming that open innovative tools and systems are essential for online life to flourish, and his contention that the Internet is exceedingly vulnerable to bad actors (a proposition I have never seen another cyberlaw scholar seriously question). But he isnât very clear about the specific attributes of laws or regulations that could effectively foster enhanced security without impairing dynamism. He also seems to have a discomfitingly elitist view about who should be making policy decisions about the Internetâs future: like-minded, self-appointed, and knowledgeable volunteers with the time, interest, and expertise to successfully maneuver sectors of the Internet into the form or direction he thinks best
The Path of Internet Law: An Annotated Guide to Legal Landmarks
The evolution of the Internet has forever changed the legal landscape. The Internet is the worldâs largest marketplace, copy machine, and instrumentality for committing crimes, torts, and infringing intellectual property. Justice Holmesâs classic essay on the path of the law drew upon six centuries of case reports and statutes. In less than twenty-five years, Internet law has created new legal dilemmas and challenges in accommodating new information technologies. Part I is a brief timeline of Internet case law and statutory developments for Internet-related intellectual property (IP) law. Part II describes some of the ways in which the Internet is redirecting the path of IP in a globalized information-based economy. Our broader point is that every branch of substantive and procedural law is adapting to the digital world. Part III is the functional equivalent of a GPS for locating the latest U.S. and foreign law resources to help lawyers, policymakers, academics and law students lost in cyberspace
The Path of Internet Law: An Annotated Guide to Legal Landmarks
The evolution of the Internet has forever changed the legal landscape. The Internet is the worldâs largest marketplace, copy machine, and instrumentality for committing crimes, torts, and infringing intellectual property. Justice Holmesâs classic essay on the path of the law drew upon six centuries of case reports and statutes. In less than twenty-five years, Internet law has created new legal dilemmas and challenges in accommodating new information technologies. Part I is a brief timeline of Internet case law and statutory developments for Internet-related intellectual property (IP) law. Part II describes some of the ways in which the Internet is redirecting the path of IP in a globalized information-based economy. Our broader point is that every branch of substantive and procedural law is adapting to the digital world. Part III is the functional equivalent of a GPS for locating the latest U.S. and foreign law resources to help lawyers, policymakers, academics and law students lost in cyberspace
Platforms, the First Amendment and Online Speech: Regulating the Filters
In recent years, online platforms have given rise to multiple discussions about what their role is, what their role should be, and whether they should be regulated. The complex nature of these private entities makes it very challenging to place them in a single descriptive category with existing rules. In todayâs information environment, social media platforms have become a platform press by providing hosting as well as navigation and delivery of public expression, much of which is done through machine learning algorithms. This article argues that there is a subset of algorithms that social media platforms use to filter public expression, which can be regulated without constitutional objections. A distinction is drawn between algorithms that curate speech for hosting purposes and those that curate for navigation purposes, and it is argued that content navigation algorithms, because of their function, deserve separate constitutional treatment. By analyzing the platformsâ functions independently from one another, this paper constructs a doctrinal and normative framework that can be used to navigate some of the complexity.
The First Amendment makes it problematic to interfere with how platforms decide what to host because algorithms that implement content moderation policies perform functions analogous to an editorial role when deciding whether content should be censored or allowed on the platform. Content navigation algorithms, on the other hand, do not face the same doctrinal challenges; they operate outside of the public discourse as mere information conduits and are thus not subject to core First Amendment doctrine. Their function is to facilitate the flow of information to an audience, which in turn participates in public discourse; if they have any constitutional status, it is derived from the value they provide to their audience as a delivery mechanism of information.
This article asserts that we should regulate content navigation algorithms to an extent. They undermine the notion of autonomous choice in the selection and consumption of content, and their role in todayâs information environment is not aligned with a functioning marketplace of ideas and the prerequisites for citizens in a democratic society to perform their civic duties. The paper concludes that any regulation directed to content navigation algorithms should be subject to a lower standard of scrutiny, similar to the standard for commercial speech
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