The Viability of a ‘Ministry of Truth’ for Political Advertising


Video date:
Thursday, 8 October, 2020

Video speaker(s): 
Key Speaker: Beth Shiner, Lecturer in Law; PhD Candidate in Law (Middlesex University London; University of Oxford)
Discussant: Dr Patrick O’Callaghan, Lecturer in Law (School of Law, University College Cork

Description

Democracy demands plenty of space for political debate, information sharing, deliberation and opinion forming. Reforms that in any way reduce that space, which is protected by international human rights law, must be avoided. As such, I have argued that reforms to tackle disinformation in digital political communication should focus not on the content of the material but on the method of spreading the material online, for example by targeting bot accounts on twitter.  

The seminar will offer a preliminary view of proposals to regulate political speech as far as it is claimed to be inaccurate with reference to the ongoing debate about the “existential threat” to democracy that disinformation poses and the need to preserve the necessary space for freedom of expression and avoid self-serving arbitrators of political speech.

Chair: Dr Nóra Ni Loideain, Director and Lecturer in Law, Information Law and Policy Centre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. 

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