About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

31 Policing Soc'y: Int'l J. Res. Pol'y 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/pgsty31 and id is 1 raw text is: POLICING AND SOCIETY 2021, VOL. 31, NO. 1, 1-19 https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2020.1839073 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Forecasting the governance of harmful social media communications: findings from the digital wildfire policy Delphi Adam Edwards a, Helena Webb b William Housley a, Roser Beneito-Montagut a, Rob Procter C and Marina Jirotka b 'School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK; bDepartment of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; cDepartment of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Social media exhibits the core characteristics of emergent technologies. It Received 23 September 2019 is disruptive of established ways of organising social relations, is evolving Accepted 14 October 2020 at an exponential pace and its effects, including the production of new 'goods' and 'bads', are highly uncertain. Interest in understanding these effects has intensified in the context of fears over so-called 'digital wildfire', a policy construct referring to rapid propagation of harmful communications, particularly those involving children and other vulnerable social groups but also those threatening the integrity of the political process in liberal democracies. Even so, proponents of social media are anxious to protect its potential for enhancing freedom of speech and revitalising civil society through the redistribution of editorial powers to shape public debate and facilitate the democratic scrutiny and oversight of elites. This article reports findings of the 'Digital Wildfire policy Delphi', which asked key informants to consider the political and technical feasibility of regulating harmful social media communications and to forecast likely scenarios for their prospective governance. Key forecasts are that forms of enforcement are limited, stimulating 'self-regulation' will become increasingly important but, more controversially, the likelihood is that harm to vulnerable groups will be 'accommodated' in liberal democracies as a price to be paid for the perceived political and economic benefits of unmoderated social media. The article concludes with conjectures about future directions in the policing of social media and their implications for shaping the emerging research agenda. 1. Introduction The governance and regulation of social media communications is a contemporary issue of technical and political controversy. Social media platforms equip any citizen with access to the internet with the capacity to broadcast their own opinions globally and in real-time. This circumvents traditional editorial and censorial control over who can contribute to public debates. As such, social media com- munications have been celebrated as a progressive disruption of powers hitherto wielded by press barons, corporations and political parties (Edwards et al. 2013, Housley et al. 2014). However, this enthusiasm has been increasingly qualified by a concern with the harmful effects of unmoderated, 'user-generated content' (UGC). Such communications include, inter alia, defamation and reputa- tional damage to individuals, generic abuse and campaigns targeted at entire social demographics CONTACT Adam Edwards edwardsa2@cardiff.ac.uk © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most