Information Pollution in a Digital and Polarized World as a Challenge to Human Rights Protection – the Council of Europe’s Approach

Alicja Jaskiernia

University of Warsaw, Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies , Poland
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8412-7217


Abstract

Information pollution in a digitally connected and increasingly polarized world, the spread of disinformation campaigns aimed at shaping public opinion, trends of foreign electoral interference and manipulation, as well as abusive behaviour and the intensification of hate speech on the internet and social media are the phenomenon which concern international public opinion. These all represent a challenge for democracy, and in particular for the electoral processes affecting the right to freedom of expression, including the right to receive information, and the right to free elections. It is a growing international effort to deal with these problems. Among international organizations engaged to seek solutions is the Council of Europe (CoE). The author analyses CoE’s instruments, legally binding (as European Convention on Human Rights), as well of the character of “soft law”, especially resolution of the CoE’s Parliamentary Assembly 2326 (2020) Democracy hacked? How to respond? She exposes the need for better cooperation of international organizations and states’ authorities in this matter.

Keywords:

information pollution, disinformation campaigns, hate speech, democracy, Council of Europe



Ahmed, Mohiuddin, Abu S. S. M. Barkat Ullah, and Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, eds. Security analytics for the internet of everything. Boca Raton, Florida, London, New York: CRC Press, 2020.

Asensio, Pedro de Miguel. Conflict of laws and the internet. Cheltenham, England, Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.

Balas, Valentina E., Vijender Kumar Solanki, and Raghvendra Kumar, eds. Internet of Things and Big Data Applications Recent Advances and Challenges. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

Ball, James. The system: who owns the internet, and how it owns us. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.

Bimber, Bruce, and Homero Gil de Zúñiga. “The unedited public sphere.” New Media and Society 22(4) (2020): 700–715.

Council of Europe Report on Information and Disorder. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2017.

DeNardis, Laura. The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World with No Off Switch. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020.

Denisova, Anastasia. Internet memes and society: social, cultural, and political contexts. New York, London: Routledge, 2019.

Deuze, Mark. “The Role of Media and Mass Communication Theory in the Global Pandemic.” Communication Today 11, no. 2 (2020): 4–15.

Edwards, Lilian. Law, policy and the Internet. Oxford: Hart, 2019.

Fürnkranz, Gösta. The Quantum Internet Ultrafast and Safe from Hackers. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

Jaskiernia, Alicja. “Europejska walka z dezinformacjami i nielegalnymi treściami w sieci. Obrona jakości mediów w Unii Europejskiej i Radzie Europy.” Studia Medioznawcze 4(79) (2019): 384–394.

Jung, Bohdan, and Tadeusz Kowalski. “Restructuring Time Use Under COVID-19 Pandemics.” International Journal of Inspiration & Resilience Economy 5(1) (2021): 22–31.

McCulloch, Gretchen. Because internet: understanding the new rules of language. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.

Meel, Priyanka, and Dinesh Kumar Vishvakarma. “Fake news, rumor, information pollution in social media and web: A contemporary survey of state-of-the-arts, challenges and opportunities.” Expert Systems with Applications 153 (2020): 112986.

Meel, Priyanka, and Dinesh Kumar Vishwakarma. “A temporal ensembling based semi-supervised ConvNet for the detection of fake news articles.” Expert Systems with Applications 177 (2021): 115002.

Moura, Vicente Dário, and Sofia de Vasconcelos Casimiro, eds. Data Protection in the Internet. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

Nielsen, Jakob. “IM, Not IP (Information Pollution): A steady dose of realtime interruptions is toxic to anyone’s health.” November 2003, Association for Computing Machinery. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/966712.966731. Accessed March 23, 2021.

Orman, Levent. “Fighting Information Pollution with Decision Support Systems.” Journal of Management Information Systems 1, no. 2 (2015): 64–71.

Reed, Thomas Vernon. Digitized lives: culture, power, and social change in the internet era. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Rohokale, Vandana. Cyber Security: The Lifeline of Information and Communication Technology. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

Scott, Mark. “POLITICO Digital Bridge: COVID-19 disinformation – Digital divide - Mark Warner.” March 11, 2021. https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/digital-bridge/politico-digital-bridge-covid-19-disinformation-digital-divide-mark-warner/. Accessed March 22, 2021.

Shackelford, Scott J. The Internet of Things: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Smith, Graham, Ruth Boardman, Flynn Cathal, and Gabe Maldoff. Internet law and regulation. London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2020.

Soro, Alessandro, Margot Brereton, and Paul Roe, eds. Social Internet of Things. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019.

Susi, Susi, ed. Cyber Security: The Lifeline of Information and Communication Technology. London, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019.

Synodinou, Tatiana-Eleni, Philippe Jougleux, Christiana Markou, and Thalia Prastitou, eds. EU Internet Law in the Digital Era Regulation and Enforcement. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

Download

Published
2021-08-21


Jaskiernia, A. (2021). Information Pollution in a Digital and Polarized World as a Challenge to Human Rights Protection – the Council of Europe’s Approach. Review of European and Comparative Law, 46(3), 7–26. https://doi.org/10.31743/recl.12389

Alicja Jaskiernia  a.jaskier@gmail.com
University of Warsaw, Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies

Prof. Dr. habil. Alicja Jaskiernia, Professor, Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies, University of Warsaw; correspondence address: ul. Bednarska 2/4, 00-310 Warszawa, Poland; e-mail: a.jaskiernia@uw.edu.pl; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8412-7217.

http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8412-7217