W235-E Crop Rotations

Organic & Sustainable Crop Production serie

W235-D Increasing Farm Biodiversity

Organic & Sustainable Crop Production serie

W235-F Trap Crops, Intercropping and Companion Planting

Organic & Sustainable Crop Production serie

W235-C Building Healthy Soils

Organic & Sustainable Crop Production serie

Banning, blocking and boosting: Twitter’s solo-regulation of expression

The regulation or self-regulation of online media is one of the key dilemmas of contemporary digital media and policy environment. This includes the new digital intermediary gatekeepers such as social media. The private rules of intermediaries, such as their ‘terms of service’ and content policies, importantly define their functioning and are sometimes thought of as self-regulatory mechanisms. Online intermediaries are increasingly being called upon to engage in codes of conduct or decisions about content. We focus on Twitter as one of the largest and most relevant new gatekeepers because of its use as source of news. The terms and other documents of Twitter are analysed as tools of self-regulation, and as the context within which the individual users and mass media (must) function in today’s digital environment. We also look at how Twitter has applied this framework in two high profile cases

Submission to Ofcom: Invitation to comment for public interest test on the proposed acquisition of Sky plc by Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc.:Consultation response from the Centre for Competition Policy

The authors welcome the opportunity to respond to Ofcom’s invitation to comment on the application of the public interest test to the proposed Sky/21st Century Fox transaction. There already exists an abundance of evidence relating to Sky’s news production and distribution, as well as the prominence of its news content and that of the other news companies run by its senior management, which raise media plurality concerns in relation to this deal.1 We trust that Ofcom will be diligent and creative in assessing the risks to media plurality in terms of citizens’ access to news and information, going well beyond consumption data and perhaps revising its “share of references” metric. However, the role of media in our society is not solely the provision of news and the representation of various groups and viewpoints within that news. It is also to provide a variety of content through which our norms, values, and identities are negotiated. Therefore our contribution will focus on two other issues that we believe are crucial to the media plurality public interest test and have broader implications: (1) Sky’s position as an internet service provider (ISP), and (2) the relationship between this public interest test and the concurrent “fit and proper” test. The response affords separate consideration to (3) the scope of the ‘commitment to broadcasting standards’ public interest ground