Social Media’s Role in Democracy: Challenges and Opportunities
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In the last decade, civic life has increasingly taken place on Internet platforms, which pose unprecedented dangers of virality, incivility, misinformation, intimidation, and incitement — as well as unprecedented possibilities of connection, democratization of communication, community, and association. Now we are in the midst of a great national debate over how these platforms exercise their powers of speech and how (or if) those powers should be constrained and regulated. As Congress and the Biden administration formulate new policy, the Stanford Constitutional Law Center is convening leading scholars in the field to exchange views on the role of social media platforms in our democracy, both what it is and what it should be.
We will address questions of whether the platforms should ban or deplatform a wider range of speakers; how the values of transparency, fairness, and viewpoint neutrality can better be protected; what is the role of international human rights law (including Article 19’s protection for freedom of expression); whether new forms of self-regulation such as the Facebook Oversight Board are a promising avenue for reform; and what if any changes Congress should make to CDA 230.
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David Kaye David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression (2014-2020). His 2019 book, Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (Columbia Global Reports), explores the ways in which companies, governments and activists struggle to define the rules for online expression. To view David Kaye’s full bio, click here. |
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Eric Goldman Eric Goldman is a Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law in the Silicon Valley. He also co-directs the High Tech Law Institute and supervises the Privacy Law Certificate. He joined the Santa Clara Law faculty in 2006. To view Eric Goldman’s bio, click here.
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evelyn douek evelyn douek is a lecturer on law and S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society. She studies global regulation of online speech, private content moderation institutional design and comparative free speech law and theory. Her supervisors are Professors Martha Minow, Jack L. Goldsmith and Cass R. Sunstein. Prior to coming to HLS, evelyn was an Associate (clerk) to the Honourable Chief Justice Susan Kiefel of the High Court of Australia. She also worked in commercial litigation at Herbert Smith Freehills and Corrs Chambers Westgarth in Sydney. She graduated with First Class Honours from the University of New South Wales with a Bachelor of Commerce/Laws in 2013, where she was the Executive Editor of the UNSW Law Journal and the Undergraduate Student Representative on UNSW Council, the University’s governing body. To view evelyn douek’s profile, click here.
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