24 March 2025
The Politics of Digital Erasure
The removal of over 2,000 datasets from data.gov – specifically from government agencies in energy, environment, and NASA – reveals critical questions about the governance of digital information infrastructure and mechanisms of information control. This essay examines how these changes not only affect American governance but also global research networks that depend on U.S. federal data resources, and what these developments might mean for digital governance worldwide. Continue reading >>
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23 February 2022
The next step towards auditing intermediaries
The lack of transparency of digital platforms is a well-known problem that has wide societal implications. There is now an extraordinary opportunity to establish legally mandated criteria for meaningful transparency for online platforms in the proposed EU Digital Services Act (DSA). However, their success will depend on the strength of oversight mechanisms which need to be accompanied by sufficient access to data. Hence, we propose creating an auditing intermediary to assure the effectiveness of such oversight. Continue reading >>
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30 November 2020
The Sorrows of Scraping for Science
Access to data is an overall challenge for researchers when investigating social media platforms' content moderation policies and practices. Researchers need empirical evidence to ground their arguments and public interest research. Platforms have not only not providing data, but are, in fact, further restricting access. Both platforms and governments should make an effort to improve on the availability of data for research, and, to this end, clarify the law in this space. Continue reading >>
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