The Issue

Manipulated imagery has been around for over 150 years but it has reached a new level with “deepfakes.” The term “deepfake” originated in 2017 to describe audio and videos manipulated with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to resemble a real person even when the person portrayed did not say or do what is depicted in the content. Deepfakes are a subset of “synthetic media” which include audio, images, text and video content created with the assistance of AI. There continue to be conversations about how to differentiate synthetic audiovisual content from deepfake audiovisual content. Like many topics CNTI covers, the definitional clarity of these terms remains a work in progress and is important when considering policy.  

The number of deepfakes online increased tenfold from 2022 to 2023. While some research raises questions about the degree to which harm can be directly attributed to manipulated media, there is certainly some evidence of it in countries such as Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the United States. This is especially alarming amid a record-breaking number of national elections being held in 2024 and as broader global concerns grow about threats to the overall stability of a country. A March 2022 deepfake, for example, depicted the Ukrainian President falsely ordering his country’s military to surrender. 

To date, the highest-quality, most-convincing deepfakes require a large amount of training data and a lot of time to be persuasive. Therefore, most actors intending to cause harm are likely to pursue less resource-intensive means to spread false narratives such as disinformation tactics discussed in a separate CNTI issue primer. But as technological innovations advance, deepfakes are rapidly becoming easier to make and more persuasive.

Alongside the worry about the direct impact of a deepfake is concern about a “liar’s dividend” and the sowing of further distrust in “real news,” the news media and government figures.

Responses to the growth in deepfakes are occurring on several fronts. Many digital and online platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube) have begun implementing disclosure policies that require advertisements using AI-created content to be labeled. Others are banning certain types of synthetic material, creating training resources to assist in combating these images and working on ways to embed content with tags to confirm authenticity. 

News organizations have also developed online training courses to assist with identifying deepfakes. However, interviews with expert fact-checkers reveal that while deepfakes are a concern, many feel that more critical threats come from text, images, audio and/or video taken out of context (i.e., “decontextualized”) as well as other forms of manipulated media such as “cheap fakes” where information is recontextualized into a false narrative. 

Methods to detect synthetic media have advanced over the last several years. These identification technologies examine the shadows, geometry, pixels and/or audio anomalies of suspected synthetic media and look for hidden watermarks to evaluate authenticity. Detection challenges have encouraged researchers and the public to experiment with new ways to accurately identify deepfakes. While these techniques will almost certainly be unable to fully erase the threats of synthetic media, they do offer steps toward establishing guardrails to protect the public’s access to authentic information. To identify how to best implement detection methods, further collaboration across various sectors (e.g., technology, communications, policy, government, etc.) is needed. 

Most countries do not have specific legislation on synthetic media, but among those that do, policies fall into two general categories: (1) banning all deepfake content that does not obtain consent from the individual(s) depicted or (2) requiring disclosure and/or labeling of deepfake content. Deepfake-related regulation is particularly complex due to many countries’ protections for freedom of speech and expression. 

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

While deepfakes are a relatively new technological innovation, much research has explored how individuals interpret false information presented in differing forms of media (e.g., text, audio and/or video). In one recent study, even in the presence of a warning that deepfake content would be encountered, nearly 80% of participants did not correctly identify the only deepfake in a series of five videos. Other work has found that up to half of respondents in a nationally representative sample cannot differentiate between manipulated and authentic videos. These findings indicate that deepfakes are difficult to counter and that correcting false information is needed to support a well-informed public. 

There are also evidence-based areas of hope. Research suggests people can be trained to better detect deepfakes. Interventions that focus on the accuracy of information and the low cost of producing consumer-grade deepfakes (which can now be done in a matter of minutes using apps and websites) show positive results in an effort to counter the negative effects of this type of content. 

To complement training individuals about detecting deepfakes, one strategy is to study how responsive individuals are to informational fact checks and labels on manipulated media: 

• Fact-checking politicians’ false statements has been shown to decrease beliefs that the statements were factual, though further research into how partisanship shapes interpretation of synthetic media is crucial. Developing digital media literacy approaches, like how to spot false information, will likely be important to help individuals recognize high-quality, fact-based news. 
• Findings suggest that tagging information as false, while beneficial, also has consequences for true, authentic information. General, broad disclosures about false information can cause viewers to discount true, accurate news. The public may grow more accustomed to looking for labels and other kinds of disclosures as a way of trusting its veracity but that remains a question for now.
• False information that is not tagged as such is found to be interpreted as more accurate than other false information that has been tagged as false. These findings suggest that labels can be effective but they must be comprehensive and cover all applicable synthetic media.
• The value of asserting provenance, or tracking the authenticity and origin of content, has also been studied. While the public may not widely grasp provenance as a concept, it has been shown to decrease trust in deceptive media when presented to individuals. Further education on the importance of provenance for a fact-based news ecosystem is needed.

Future research should continue to study (1) how individuals engage with synthetic content and (2) how persuasive the public finds this content, which is especially relevant given how realistic and life-like these media are becoming. In response to the increased presence of synthetic media, researchers should also consider what techniques – including labeling and disclosure – are most effective for mitigating the negative effects stemming from deepfake content. Understanding how to respond to and “treat” individuals who have encountered deepfake content is an important consideration that can support fact-based news endeavors. Finally, research should also examine how newsrooms will confront the proliferation of deepfake content and its potential harms.

State of Legislation

Most countries do not have any existing policies that specifically target deepfakes. The existing legislation on deepfakes grapples with how to accommodate less harmful and/or benign uses of synthetic media (e.g., art, education, comedy) while addressing a broad range of harmful uses (e.g., nonconsensual adult content, deceiving consumers). Defining the harmful, illegal uses of deepfake content is critical for effective policy. Legislation attempting to protect societies from deepfake content must decide whether to ban all AI-generated deepfake content or to set restrictions on material allowed in deepfake content and develop regulations on how it is presented to audiences (e.g., labeling). 

Another crucial consideration for public policy is how to best classify deepfake media content. Much of the legislation being debated and passed in U.S. states is about images, videos and audio. However, some pieces of legislation also address text-related synthetic media, while others focus solely on videos – even if generative AI was not used in the manipulated videos. Global standards for what types of media are classified as deepfake content might be helpful but only if they are fully inclusive of the ways people receive information and interact with news and allow for future developments.

Current approaches across several U.S. states, the European Union and China involve implementing disclosure requirements or labeling content that has been generated using AI. These approaches include watermarking, content labeling and disclaimers. The parties responsible for enforcing these types of deepfake regulations have included government agencies but concerns persist that the technology is moving more quickly than legislation and oversight. For many countries, current laws that may be affected by deepfake content (e.g., right to privacy, defamation or cybercrime) do not specifically address synthetic media. These gaps make regulating manipulated content difficult. Enforcement is also problematic in cases where the content creator resides outside of a country’s jurisdiction. 

Experts recommend focusing policies on the general harms of technological innovations rather than on the technologies themselves as it is likely impossible to detect and/or ban all manipulated synthetic media. There are also concerns that deepfake regulation will curtail freedom of speech and expression. Future legislation should consider how to best craft regulations to avoid the costs of such regulations outweighing the benefits. As such, regulations ought to consider the balance between the need for freedom of expression (and an open internet) while also protecting against the harms of mis- and disinformation.

Notable Legislation

China

In 2019, China mandated disclosure of media using deepfake technology. The disclosure must state artificial intelligence and/or virtual reality technologies were used in the media. The 2023 “Deep Synthesis Provisions” update prohibited creating deepfake content without the explicit consent of the individual(s) being altered. The provision further outlined requirements for platform providers that host content.

Canada

The legal landscape in Canada has few bills with direct authority over the use of deepfakes. Experts have noted concerns that deepfakes are not well accounted for under current Canadian law.

European Union

The European Union’s (EU) AI Act, originally introduced in 2021 and passed in December 2023, presents a classification scheme for AI usage based on risk level. The legislation does not ban the use of deepfakes specifically, but rather requires disclosure of content that has been “artificially generated or manipulated.” The AI Act is expected to enter into force in 2025. A 2022 update to the EU’s 2018 Code of Practice on Disinformation has provisions to combat “malicious deepfakes.”

India

India is in the process of developing policies to regulate deepfake content. The government is actively considering the best types of policies to pursue and plans to have comprehensive legislation in the near future.

Mexico

No law specifically about artificial intelligence and deepfakes currently exists in Mexico. However, the 2023 formation of the National Alliance for Artificial Intelligence aims to understand AI use in the country and create effective regulations.

South Korea

A 2020 South Korean law made it illegal to distribute deepfakes and non-consensual adult content. This legislation states the aforementioned acts are still crimes even without an intention to harm. Concerns about how deepfakes may influence South Korea’s 2024 parliamentary elections have led to banning this type of content during the 90 days prior to the elections.

United Kingdom

The Online Safety Act, which passed in October 2023, stipulates criminal offenses for transmitting and sharing deepfake adult content, along with numerous other safety provisions. The act has a broad focus on online safety but does not include “deepfake” or “synthetic” in defining this type of content of interest, instead using terms like “automated tools.” The UK government is also funding research to detect deepfakes.

United States

U.S. legislation related to manipulated media has been proposed at both the state and national level, with several bills at the national level specifically considering deepfake content. The DEEPFAKES Accountability Act would require disclosure when producing synthetic deepfake content. Related bills under consideration include the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, the Advisory for AI-Generated Content Act, and the AI Labeling Act. The focus of these bills is on labeling deepfake content rather than outright banning their creation or use.

Resources & Events

The Issue

The physical and digital security of journalists and their sources are under threat in many parts of the world. Digital security and cybersecurity threats, in particular, have become more important than ever for the global news media as journalists and publishers are becoming high-profile targets for malware, spyware and digital surveillance, compromising their and their sources’ personal information and safety. More broadly, digital security and cybersecurity have gained the attention of policymakers globally, with 156 countries having enacted cybercrime legislation as of 2021.

Cybersecurity threats come in many forms, including increasingly sophisticated domestic and transnational spyware, denial-of-service (DDoS) and malware (malicious software used to gain unauthorized access to IT systems and spread across a network), ransomware (malware where attackers demand a payment or ransom in exchange for restoring access), and phishing attacks. A range of actors can be behind these tactics, including nation-states and politicians, powerful individuals, corporations, criminal networks and extremist organizations. 

Digital security challenges facing the global news media also involve broader threats to data privacy and security which include growing concerns about software vulnerabilities as well as the use of digital platform surveillance. For example, some governments attempt to chip away at encryption protections offered by secure apps like Signal, WhatsApp, ProtonMail or SecureDrop. Additionally, there are digital safety and privacy concerns about legacy social media platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) — a staple of global journalism practice and sourcing — where data and communications are rapidly becoming far less secure for journalists and civil society organizations in the wake of ownership and infrastructure changes.

Digital and physical threats to journalists are connected. For instance, the use of spyware has been linked to hundreds of acts of physical violence around the world. In particular, human rights organizations and cybersecurity experts have expressed concerns about the use of spyware largely developed by companies in Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. — including NSO Group’s ‘Pegasus’ and QuaDream’s ‘Reign’ — being used in dozens of countries around the world, especially in Latin America. There is also an increasingly important link between governments’ use of spyware and their use of lawfare (i.e., the weaponization of legal systems or institutions) against journalists. Together, these threats have critical detrimental effects on journalists’ mental health (discussed in more detail in CNTI’s upcoming issue primer on journalist safety), leading to calls for a holistic approach to security efforts.

In addition to raising safety and psychosocial concerns, digital security threats also damage trust in the news media. In an attention economy, cyberattacks can eliminate entire business models and push audiences away by slowing or crashing websites. A lack of digital security training in newsrooms — particularly newsrooms outside of large national (and largely Western) publishers with the means to provide such training — can create chilling effects for sources and whistleblowers who increasingly fear being unintentionally exposed by journalists. These patterns are representative of the public’s broader lack of trust in the safety of personal data, including in the hands of news publishers. In cases where sources are less aware of digital security concerns, research finds journalists are often hesitant to request protective measures for fear of scaring off sources. 

These threats are expensive and difficult for newsrooms to address on their own. They are even more difficult for independent journalists or publishers operating in (or in exile from) countries with hostile governments or authoritarian regimes. Thus, collaboration among policymakers, platforms, researchers and domestic and international civil society organizations is critical to ensure digital security of the global press.

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

In parallel with the rise of other threats to press freedom and journalists’ security – particularly in the wake of the Snowden revelations – a burgeoning academic field has turned its attention to questions around the digital and information security of the global press. Academic and public attention to cybercrime, ransomware, and spyware have also grown, both in the wake of prominent attacks and amid growing concerns about the adoption of generative AI technologies in cyberattacks – for instance, leveraging these systems to manipulate journalists’ likeness – and AI’s broader threats to digital privacy and security (see CNTI’s issue primer on AI in journalism).

It is clear from this body of work that journalists and their sources in many countries are increasingly concerned about or actively experiencing a range of digital threats (whether from domestic, foreign or unknown actors), but for several cultural, institutional and individual-level reasons, this does not often result in changes to practices or policies to counter such threats. 

Further, work by organizations including Forbidden Stories, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and the Committee to Protect Journalists have tracked at least 180 cases of spyware targeting journalists, particularly by clients of NSO Group. Other research has depicted the unique threats of digital surveillance to (1) investigative journalists and (2) marginalized people and communities including women, queer and gender-nonconforming people and people of color. This work, as noted earlier, has revealed the relationship between journalists’ digital presence and offline abuse, including but not limited to physical violence. These risks are often amplified in non-Western regions as well as in areas of conflict. (We will discuss the related issue of online harassment in detail in a separate issue primer.)

Research on the targeting of journalists (and the public more broadly) using digital surveillance or “dataveillance,” hacking and spyware often focuses specifically on:

• How journalists perceive and adapt to information security challenges, including their protection of and secure communication with sources and whistleblowers.
• How digital intimidation tactics threaten press freedom and journalists’ ability to deliver stories in the public interest.
• The influence of new technologies and the rise of “dataveillance” by state and corporate actors.

While this research speaks to the global nature of digital security threats to an independent press, future research should continue to examine how journalists, technology companies, researchers and policymakers can collaborate to defend against these threats, including tracking trends and sharing practices. Currently, many conversations about how to address these threats also lack global evidence. For instance, it is unclear how, or to what extent, digital security technologies such as encryption software have been implemented by journalists outside of Western countries. It is also important to understand how communication between journalists and their sources has evolved in an increasingly digital but often less safe environment.

Further, a lack of resources continues to play a critical role in news publishers’ and journalists’ ability to protect against and respond to digital security threats. Digital forensics efforts by organizations such as Citizen Lab and Amnesty Tech illustrate the critical role intermediaries play in creating networks, developing resources and establishing support mechanisms to protect the digital security of the global press. What other areas within this ecosystem must be strengthened to account for these growing threats, and what could those resources or collaborations look like?

State of Legislation

Cybercrime has become a growing concern among policymakers in many parts of the world. As of 2021, the UN Conference on Trade and Development found that 156 countries (80%) had enacted cybercrime legislation, though adoption rates vary by region. 

However, cybercrime policy (including but not limited to “cyber libel,” “cyberterrorism” and “online hate speech” laws) does not always account for — and at times directly threatens — the digital safety of journalists. Often, cybercrime policy efforts are led by countries’ security or banking sectors, leading to policymaking that may not take into account — or be at odds with — international standards for press freedom and privacy. Research has found that a majority of cybercrime laws include few safeguards to protect against investigatory overreach and incorporate provisions with vague or broad wording that can be used to target journalists, thus threatening an independent press and free expression.

Over the past two decades, legal frameworks established to protect an independent press and the confidentiality of journalistic sources and information have been under threat in many parts of the world. New legislation and policies, including national security or anti-terrorism legislation, override and/or contradict existing protections. Other policies pressure or force digital intermediaries to provide private user data. When legislation does not adequately account for new uses of, or technological tools for, digital data by journalists and sources, it will not provide them with necessary legal protections, thus making forward-thinking policymaking critical.

Broader debates around who qualifies as a ‘journalist’ and what qualifies as ‘journalism’ also play an important role in cyber policy, as they affect who receives which legal protections. Do the same data or source protections, for instance, extend to freelancers or citizen journalists, or to international journalists doing cross-border or conflict reporting? A lack of definitional clarity in policymaking can lead to inconsistent or unequal entitlement to protections.

Global experts have called for collaborative approaches to global cybersecurity regulations through private and public sector coordination as well as strengthened international data protection frameworks. Such frameworks loosely exist, to some extent, within agreements to advance citizens’ privacy rights by the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and as a part of efforts to establish a global cybercrime treaty by the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Programme on Cybercrime. However, these protections are not currently codified and do not account for the unique digital security threats posed to journalists and other sectors of civil society. Harmonizing these standards cross-nationally could also promote the development of more resilient digital infrastructures – though, as illustrated in recent UN efforts, consensus on definitional considerations and cross-border oversight are difficult to achieve, particularly between democratic societies and authoritarian regimes.

Finally, it is critical at both the supranational and national levels to have open legislative processes around cybercrime or cybersecurity so that the voices of the news media and journalists, as well as civil society more broadly, are taken into account from the start.

Notable Legislation

Australia

Australia’s controversial 2018 anti-encryption laws (the TOLA Act), aimed at requiring technology companies to grant national security and law enforcement agencies access to encrypted messages, have been widely criticized by cybersecurity experts. Key concerns about the act include both its lack of independent judicial oversight and its broad scope. Oversight agencies and civil society organizations have recommended changes but they have not been implemented.

Bangladesh

In August 2023, the Bangladesh government approved the final draft of its Cyber Security Act (CSA), developed to “tone down” the country’s Digital Security Act (DSA) amid global criticism and allegedly remove vaguely worded provisions that can easily be abused to restrict press freedom (e.g., replacing imprisonment with monetary fines for journalists in defamation cases). Human rights organizations have argued the CSA retains most provisions used to curtail free expression and privacy.

Council of Europe

In September 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights released a spyware report, citing “mounting evidence” that member-states have used spyware for illegitimate purposes and asking five countries to investigate abuses. The committee also requested information from Israel on how it ensures Pegasus spyware is not acquired to violate human rights. The Council has called on member-states to establish spyware oversight structures.

European Union

Announced in September 2022, the E.U.’s proposed Cyber Resilience Act aimed to bolster European protections against cyberattacks. In June 2023, European Parliament members voted to urge the E.U. to tighten regulations around commercial spyware, noting their threats to human rights and adopting a resolution outlining reforms needed to curb abuse. The resolution includes calls for rules on spyware uses by law enforcement and for five countries to comply with investigations into abuses. This is expected to take effect in early 2024.

Jordan

In September 2023, a cybercrime bill (Law No. 17) took effect after approval by King Abdullah II. Among other provisions, the law restricts certain online speech designated as “cybercrimes,” including content “undermining national unity,” as punishable by prison time and/or fines, with penalties determined by judges. There are concerns that the law threatens digital rights and free expression.

Kenya

In August 2022, Kenya’s government launched its National Cybersecurity Strategy as a framework to address new challenges and emerging cyber threats, emphasizing a commitment to global collaboration. In July 2023, Kenya faced a series of DDoS cyberattacks. In response, the Ministry of Information, Communications & Digital Economy announced a multistakeholder cybersecurity roundtable, though civil society, academia and local technology voices were notably absent.

Poland

In September 2023, Poland’s Senate published the findings of a special commission’s 18-month investigation into the governmental use of Pegasus spyware in a 2019 hacking scandal, noting “gross violations of constitutional standards” and recommending potential criminal charges against the politicians implicated in the scandal. The report concluded that spyware such as Pegasus cannot be used under Polish law.

United Kingdom

The U.K.’s proposed Online Safety Bill, a complicated and sweeping set of measures, is intended to counter a broad range of digital harms. Related to cybersecurity is the bill’s potential threat to the security of encrypted services. One clause would allow U.K. regulator Ofcom to scan end-to-end encrypted messages for child abuse content. There are concerns that it could be exploited to spy on users’ private conversations, eroding encryption protections and threatening human rights.

United Nations

In September 2023, negotiations concluded for the UN’s proposed global treaty on cybercrime. While intended to help countries share information on such crimes, autocratic governments have sought to broaden the scope of cybercrime, which could curtail an independent press and free expression. Consensus was not reached on fundamental issues, including the scope and definition of cybercrimes or human rights safeguards. Experts have noted concerns that a flawed treaty may empower human rights abuses and authorize broad cross-border surveillance.

United States

In early 2023, the Biden administration released a wide-ranging cybersecurity strategy aiming to bolster protections against cyberattacks. Separately, the administration has taken action to counter spyware abuses, including announcing a multi-country collaboration to control the proliferation of these technologies and signing an executive order to prohibit U.S. governmental use of commercial spyware.

Read more here.

Resources & Events

The Issue

Early forms of artificial intelligence (prior to the development of generative AI) have been used for years to both create and distribute online news and information. Larger newsrooms have leveraged automation for years to streamline production and routine tasks, from generating earnings reports and sports recaps to producing tags and transcriptions. While these practices have been far less common in local and smaller newsrooms, they are being adopted more. Technology companies also increasingly use AI to automate critical tasks related to news and information, such as recommending and moderating content as well as generating search results and summaries.

Until now, public debates around the rise of artificial intelligence have largely focused on its potential to disrupt manual labor and operational work such as food service or manufacturing, with the assumption that creative work would be far less affected. However, a recent wave of accessible – and far more sophisticated – “generative AI” systems such as DALL-E, Lensa AI, Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, Poe and Bard have raised concerns about their potential for destabilizing white-collar jobs and media work, abusing copyright (both against and by newsrooms), giving the public inaccurate information and eroding trust. At the same time, these technologies also create new pathways for sustainability and innovation in news production, ranging from generating summaries or newsletters and covering local events (with mixed results) to pitching stories and moderating comments sections.

As newsrooms experiment with new uses of generative AI, some of their practices have been criticized for errors and a lack of transparency. News publishers themselves are claiming copyright and terms-of-service violations by those using news content to build and train new AI tools (and, in some cases, striking deals with tech companies or blocking web crawler access to their content), while also grappling with the potential of generative AI tools to further shift search engine traffic away from news content. 

These developments introduce novel legal and ethical challenges for journalists, creators, policymakers and social media platforms. This includes how publishers use AI in news production and distribution, how AI systems draw from news content and how AI policy around the world will shape both. CNTI will address each of these, with a particular focus on areas that require legislation as well as those that should be a part of ethical journalism practice and policy. Copyright challenges emerging from artificial intelligence are addressed here, though CNTI also offers a separate issue primer focusing on issues of copyright more broadly.

What Makes it Complex

In considering legislation, it is unclear how to determine which AI news practices would fall within legal parameters, how to categorize those that do and how news practices differ from other AI uses.

What specific practices and types of content would be subject to legislative policy? How would it apply to other types of AI? What comprises “artificial intelligence” is often contested and difficult to define depending on how broad the scope is (e.g., if it includes or excludes classical algorithms) and whether one uses technical or “human-based” language (e.g., “machine learning” vs. “AI”). New questions have emerged around the umbrella term of “generative AI” systems, most prominently Large Language Models (LLMs), further complicating these distinctions. These questions will need to be addressed in legislation in ways that protect citizens’ and creators’ fundamental rights and safety. At the same time, policymakers must consider the future risks of each system, as these technologies will continue to evolve at a faster pace than policy can reasonably keep up with.

The quantity and type of data collected by generative AI programs introduce new privacy and copyright concerns.

Among these concerns is what data is collected and how it is used by AI tools, in terms of both the input (the online data scraped to train these tools) and the output (the automated content itself). For example, Stable Diffusion was originally trained on 2.3 billion captioned images, including copyrighted works as well as images from artists, Pinterest and stock image sites. Additionally, news publishers have questioned whether their articles are being used to train AI tools without authorization, potentially violating terms-of-service agreements. In response, some technology companies have begun discussing agreements to pay publishers for use of their content to train generative AI models. This issue raises a central question about what in our digital world should qualify as a derivative piece of content, thereby tying it to copyright rules. Further, does new AI-generated content deserve its own copyright? If so, who gets the copyright: the developers who built the algorithm or the entity that published the content?

The copyright challenges of AI (addressed in more detail in our copyright issue primer) also present ethical dilemmas involved in profiting off of the output of AI models trained on copyrighted creative work without attribution or compensation.

Establishing transparency and disclosure standards for AI practices requires a coordinated approach between legal and organizational policies.

While some areas of transparency may make sense to be addressed through legal requirements (like current advertising disclosures), others will be more appropriate for technology companies and publishers to take on themselves. This means establishing their own principles, guidelines and policies for navigating the use of AI within their organizations – ranging from appropriate application to labeling to image manipulation. But these will need to both fit alongside any legal requirements and also be similar enough across organizations for public understanding. Newsroom education will also be critical, as journalists themselves are often unsure of how, or to what extent, their organizations rely on AI. For technology companies specifically, there is ongoing debate over requirements of algorithmic transparency (addressed in more detail in our algorithmic accountability issue primer) and the degree to which legal demand for this transparency could enable bad actors to hack or otherwise take advantage of the system in harmful ways.

The use of generative AI tools to create news stories presents a series of challenges around providing fact-based information to the public; the question of how that factors into legal or organizational policies remains uncertain.

Generative AI tools have initially been shown to produce content riddled with factual errors. Not only do they include false or entirely made-up information, but they are also “confidently wrong,” creating convincingly high-quality content and offering authoritative arguments for inaccuracies. Distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate content (or even satire) will, therefore, become increasingly difficult – particularly as counter-AI tools have so far been ineffective. Further, it is easy to produce AI-generated images or content and use it to manipulate search engine optimization results. This can be exploited by spammers who churn out AI-generated “news” content or antidemocratic actors who create scalable and potentially persuasive propaganda and misinformation. For instance, while news publishers such as Semafor have generated powerful AI animations of Ukraine war eyewitness accounts in the absence of original footage, the same technology was weaponized by hackers to create convincing “deepfakes” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling citizens to lay down their arms. While it is clear automation offers many opportunities to improve news efficiency and innovation, it also risks further commoditizing and undermining public trust in news.

There are inherent biases in generative AI tools that content generators and policymakers need to be aware of and guard against.

Because these technologies are usually trained on massive swaths of data scraped from the internet, they tend to replicate existing social biases and inequities. For instance, Lensa AI – a photo-editing app that launched a viral AI-powered avatar feature – has been alleged to produce hypersexualized and racialized images. Experts have expressed similar concerns about DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, which employ neural networks to transform text into imagery, which could be used to amplify stereotypes and produce fodder for sexual harassment or misinformation. The highly lauded AI text generator ChatGPT has been shown to generate violent, racist and sexist content (e.g. that only white men would make good scientists). Further, both the application of AI systems to sociocultural contexts they weren’t developed for and the human work in places like Kenya to make generative AI output less toxic present ethical issues. Finally, while natural language processing (NLP) is rapidly improving, AI tools’ training in dominant languages worsens longstanding access barriers for those who speak marginalized languages around the world. Developers have announced efforts to reduce some of these biases, but the longstanding, embedded nature of these biases and global use of the tools will make mitigation challenging.

State of Research

Artificial intelligence is no longer a fringe technology. Research finds a majority of companies, particularly those based in emerging economies, report AI adoption as of 2021. Experts have begun to document the increasingly critical role of AI for news publishers and technology companies, both separately and in relation to each other. And there is mounting evidence that AI technologies are routinely used both in social platforms’ algorithms and in everyday news work, though the latter is often concentrated among larger and upmarket publishers who have the resources to invest in these practices.

There are limitations to what journalists and the public understand when it comes to AI. Research shows there are gaps between the pervasiveness of AI uses in news and journalists’ understandings of and attitudes toward these practices. Further, audience-focused research on AI in journalism has found that news users often cannot discern between AI-generated and human-generated content. They also perceive there to be less media bias and higher credibility for certain types of AI-generated news, despite ample evidence that AI tools can perpetuate social biases and enable the development of disinformation.

Much of the existing research on AI in journalism has been theoretical. Even when the work is evidence-based, it is often more qualitative than quantitative, which allows us to answer some important questions, but makes a representative assessment of the situation difficult. Theoretical work has focused on the changing role of AI in journalism practice, the central role of platform companies in shaping AI and the conditions of news work, and the implications for AI dependence on journalism’s value and its ability to fulfill its democratic aims. Work in the media policy space has largely concentrated around European Union policy debates and the role of transparency around AI news practices in enhancing trust.

Future work should prioritize evidence-based research on how AI reshapes the news people get to see – both directly from publishers and indirectly through platforms. AI research focused outside of the U.S. and outside economically developed countries would offer a fuller understanding of how technological changes affect news practices globally. On the policy side, comparative analyses of use cases would aid in developing transnational best practices in news transparency and disclosure around AI.

State of Legislation

The latest wave of AI innovation has, in most countries, far outpaced governmental oversight or regulation. Regulatory responses to emerging technologies like AI have ranged from direct regulation to soft law (e.g. guidelines) to industry self-regulation, and they vary by country. Some governments, such as Russia and China, directly or indirectly facilitate – and thus often control – the development of AI in their countries. Others attempt to facilitate innovation by involving various stakeholders. Some actively seek to regulate AI technology and protect citizens against its risks. For example, when it comes to privacy the EU’s legislation has placed heavy emphasis on robust protections of citizens’ data from commercial and state entities, while countries like China assume the state’s right to collect and use citizens’ data.

These differences reflect a lack of agreement over what values should underpin AI legislation or ethics frameworks and make global consensus over its regulation challenging. That said, legislation in one country can have important effects elsewhere. It is important that those proposing policy and other solutions recognize global differences and consider the full range of their potential impacts without compromising democratic values of an independent press, an open internet and free expression.

Legislative policies specifically intended to regulate AI can easily be weakened by a lack of clarity around what qualifies as AI, making violations incredibly hard to identify and enforce. Given the complexity of these systems and the speed of innovation in this field, experts have called for individualized and adaptive provisions rather than one-size-fits-all responses. Recommendations for broader stakeholder involvement in building AI legislation also include engaging groups (such as marginalized or vulnerable communities) that are often most impacted by its outcomes.

Finally, as the role of news content in the training of AI systems becomes an increasingly central part of regulatory and policy debates, responses to AI developments will likely need to account for the protection of an independent, competitive news media. Currently, this applies to policy debates about modernizing copyright and fair use provisions for digital content as well as collective bargaining codes and other forms of economic support between publishers and the companies that develop and commodify these technologies.

Notable Legislation

Brazil

In September 2021, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies approved the Marco Legal da Inteligência Artificial to regulate the development of AI technologies and promote research on AI ethics and accountability. In May 2023, a bill was proposed to regulate AI use based on recommendations made by a working group created in 2022. The stated aim of this legislation is to protect citizens’ fundamental rights and, like the EU’s AI Act, introduces a risk-based regulatory model for AI systems.

Read more here.

Canada

Canada’s proposed Artificial Intelligence & Data Act (AIDA), Bill C-27, would place guardrails on AI uses and enforce penalties for noncompliance. These requirements focus on addressing AI bias, transparency, risk mitigation and record-keeping. A lack of definitional clarity in the legislation makes it unclear exactly which systems it proposes to regulate. Because the AIDA focuses on deliberately harmful AI use, there is also a lack of clarity on the “gray areas” of AI harms. 

Read more here.

China

In 2021, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology published new ethical guidelines for the use of AI in China. These guidelines build off of the 2017 “A Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan.” The guidelines focus on promoting and actively monitoring AI development by technology companies to achieve national priorities. They also mandate the use of the People’s Republic of China’s national standards for AI, as they apply to big data, cloud computing and industrial software.

European Union

The EU’s AI Act, adopted in June 2023, assigns AI applications to three risk categories, banning uses of systems with “unacceptable” risk levels (violating fundamental rights or safety) and increasing regulation of “high-risk” systems. It also requires that all copyrightable data used in AI model training be published. Concerns include a lack of clarity of what constitutes AI, flexibility in the regulation process and unintended legal implications for marginalized communities. 

Read more here.

Italy

In April 2023, Italy’s data protection authority announced a probe into ChatGPT’s suspected breach of privacy regulations and ordered OpenAI to stop processing Italian user data. The regulator noted concerns about ChatGPT’s lack of age restrictions and the generation of misinformation. OpenAI responded with plans to offer age verification tools, add more visibility to its privacy policy and allow EU users to object to the use of their data to train AI models, and ChatGPT was restored in Italy.

United States

In recent years in the U.S., a range of legislative proposals have been introduced that would, to some extent, regulate AI. The AI Bill of Rights, unveiled in October 2022, may set the stage for future legislation but lacks mechanisms for regulation. In March 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office launched an initiative to examine AI issues. In October 2023, the Biden administration released an executive order to develop safety guidelines around generative AI. Organizations have tracked AI proposals at the federal and state levels.

Read more here.

Resources & Events

The Issue

For decades, the commercial business model of bundled news with embedded advertising generated high profitability for publishers. The internet gave rise to new structures for news consumption as well as new and more targeted ways for advertisers to reach people. As the digital landscape evolved and more of the public moved online, the traditional news business model became obsolete and the news industry plunged into financial crisis. 

Simultaneously, the role of news publishers began to change, particularly when it came to distribution of news. While the advent of digital platforms (primarily social media and search engines) broadened news publishers’ access to potential audiences, it also left publishers more dependent on these intermediaries. 

Amid these changes, the news industry has made efforts to develop new business models such as building digital subscribers, donations, grants, membership events and other means of funding. While there have been some successes, the news industry has not been able to generate the levels of revenue it had previously enjoyed. Because news is critical to functioning democracies, governments and civil society have responded to economic challenges in the news industry with a range of policy initiatives aimed at providing financial support.

When it comes to commercial news media, a range of proposals to provide financial support exist, but most notable are recent media bargaining legislation in Australia and Canada, which have inspired policy debates in many parts of the world. Earlier attempts to provide financial support for news were often based on copyright law, but these policies are based on competition (antitrust) law, requiring digital platforms to negotiate payment to news publishers on the grounds that platforms have financially benefited from digital advertising by providing links to publisher content without due compensation. Other efforts, such as in the U.S., aim to create exemptions to antitrust law to bring technology companies to the bargaining table. 

In response to some of this legislation, technology companies such as Meta and Google have begun to shift away from news altogether, calling the legislation unworkable for a number of reasons, including concerns over their own financial liabilities. This shift away from news would almost certainly harm publishers’ (and particularly smaller publishers’) ability to reach audiences and inhibit the public’s ability to access legitimate news sources and information. 

There are also ongoing policy debates surrounding what is perhaps the most substantial form of direct government intervention in the news industry: support for public service media. In many democracies, public media sit at the center of the news ecosystem, making them key players in debates around public policy aimed at enabling independent, competitive journalism. However, public media also continue to face many of the same threats as the commercial news industry, including challenges with digital transitions, decades of budget cuts and, in some cases, political attacks. As we address later in this primer, policy discussions surrounding public versus commercial news media support are often siloed or considered at odds with one another (despite little to no evidence to date supporting the theory that public media support ‘crowds out’ or shrinks commercial news audiences). 

Attempts to regulate economic support for the news industry introduce difficult but critical questions about the balance between news as a public good versus a market product, the role of public or local media and freelance journalists in the news ecosystem, the tension between content neutrality and curbing mis- and disinformation, the challenge of making complex and proprietary platform infrastructures publicly governable and accountable, the potential implications of government involvement in news media revenue structures and the role of public policy in compensating for market forces (versus changing them) in the public interest.

It is critical to address the economic sustainability of the news industry, which includes promoting a pluralistic, diverse and innovative media ecosystem, local and public news, and broader public access to news. However, these multistakeholder conversations must be guided by evidence-based practices that reflect strengths and weaknesses of policy-driven news support, with an eye toward media independence, plurality and transparency.

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

As CNTI notes in other issue primers, a breadth of research in recent years has emphasized both the global news industry’s continued struggle with the transition to a digital and mobile media environment and publishers’ evolving relationship with, and dependency on, platform companies.

One segment of this research is specifically concentrated around policy-driven economic support for news. Much of this recent work centers on three key areas:

• Systematic evidence of the impact of platforms (and platform changes) on publishers and the public.
• Evaluations of existing cases of media sustainability legislation, including Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code and Canada’s tax credits.
• Evaluations of a broader set of initiatives with the aim of supporting an independent, pluralistic news media environment, including funding public service media or local news publishers.

It is clear across this work that no policy response addressing economic support for news is perfect. However, experts in this field have noted the strengths and weaknesses of various legislative efforts, consistently calling for measures of transparency and public accountability, the protection of editorial independence from undue commercial and political influence and the need to tailor solutions to a country’s specific needs. Further, this work reflects the broad range of tested and broadly supported policy initiatives that exist outside of media bargaining codes, including those that promote media pluralism and support public or local media.

As new policy initiatives aimed at media sustainability – and responses from major platform companies – unfold in real time, future work in this area can uniquely examine the impact of such legislation on media sustainability and independence as well as an informed public. One major obstacle to research in this area is limited independent researcher access to publishers’ closely held internal data (or smaller and local publishers simply lacking such data) as well as to platforms’ increasingly restrictive APIs, which CNTI explores in more detail in a separate issue primer. Related to this is a lack of, and at times conflicting, data on and research into news publishers’ advertising revenue and traffic. Collaboration among publishers, platforms, academics and civil society organizations will be critical to evaluating the success of policy models for media sustainability.

State of Legislation

Globally, policymakers and civil society have tried a wide range of approaches to enable a sustainable and pluralistic media environment with varying success. These approaches have included but are not limited to:

• Funding for public service media via license fees (e.g., the UK), media taxes (e.g., Germany) or from the state budget (e.g., Denmark).
• Direct domestic subsidies (e.g., Denmark, France, Canada) to news organizations or independent funding bodies.
• Indirect domestic subsidies, including Value-Added Tax (VAT) exemptions and tax rebates (e.g., Ghana) or credits (e.g., Canada) for publishers, editorial roles, freelance journalists or digital subscriptions.
• Media subscription vouchers (e.g., France).
• Competitive or selective funds (e.g., formerly New Zealand).
• Emergency relief funds (e.g., during COVID-19).
• International subsidies for public interest journalism.
• Government advertising, though this can become a method of indirect censorship.
• Extended copyright or copyright-like protections (e.g., Germany, Spain, EU).
• Non-legislative approaches such as direct civil society or private-sector funding.

More recently, as we note earlier in this primer, adopted and proposed legislation in countries such as Australia, Canada, Brazil and the U.S. has required large platform companies to negotiate commercial deals with news publishers for their content, largely on the basis of antitrust or competition law. To proponents of these initiatives, they represent a much-needed rebalancing of power between digital platforms and the publishers whose content they distribute and monetize. As Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code in particular becomes a popular model for other governments, experts continue to note concerns, evidenced by research cited above, about issues of transparency, a lack of definitional clarity, long-term sustainability and further media dependence on major platforms. Additionally, media bargaining structures, which often primarily benefit legacy and larger publishers, risk becoming the arbiter of what news and information appears online, as well as whether news is carried there at all.

As we discuss in a separate issue primer, in many cases it is unclear how to assess what “quality” news – or even “news” more broadly – is. While some work indicates a certain degree of consensus around how to define ‘news’ across existing legislation in countries like Canada and the U.S., the provisions that structure these definitions (including publisher reach, size, geographic orientation, originality of reporting, etc.) vary and shape the outcomes of these laws.

Notable Legislation

Australia

Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC), passed into law in February 2021, was the first regulation of its kind and has since served as a model for other countries. While the code faced strong resistance from platform companies, dozens of commercial agreements have been made (though deals are far from transparent). Concerns include that the law primarily benefits large publishers, lacks transparency requirements and does not set clear requirements for how funds are spent.

Read more here.

Brazil

Brazil’s proposed media bargaining code, recognizing publishers’ rights to be paid for news content as part of a larger set of platform regulations (PL 2630), stalled in May 2023. The bill did not include transparency requirements, and private sector concerns included its potential to compensate creators of disinformation. Aggressive platform responses to shape public debate received international criticism, and experts noted concerns with the overall escalation of responses.

Read more here.

Canada

Canada’s Online News Act, Bill C-18, goes into effect in December 2023. Building on Australia’s NMBC, C-18 narrowed the platform exemption process and added transparency requirements, though experts have concerns that the ambiguity of inclusion criteria may harm smaller publishers. Google has agreed to pay $100M CAD annually in financial support to the Canadian news industry, whereas platforms like Meta have blocked Canadian news links in response to the legislation.

Read more here.

Indonesia

In early 2023, Indonesia’s government began drafting regulations to be issued under the Publisher Rights Presidential Decree allowing publishers to obtain payments from digital platforms, representing a first step toward antitrust regulation enforced via executive decree. This decree became official in February 2024. Provisions of the bargaining structure will be overseen by Indonesia’s Press Council. Major platform companies have noted their  opposition to the draft decree.

South Africa

In March 2023, South Africa’s Competition Authority announced an inquiry into news distribution by digital platforms, representing a first step toward antitrust regulation modeled after Australia’s and Canada’s.

United Kingdom

It is expected that a bargaining code similar to Australia’s and Canada’s will be revealed by Parliament by the end of 2023 as part of a larger legislative package, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer (DMCC) Bill, aimed at regulating digital platforms.

United States

The Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), revived in June 2023, would create an exemption to antitrust law allowing news publishers to band together to negotiate for payments from digital platforms. Concerns include that the bill primarily benefits large publishers, does not set clear requirements for how funds are spent, and may threaten platforms’ content moderation efforts and violate copyright law.

Related bills have been proposed at the state and federal levels. Read more here.

Taiwan

Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) is currently developing a model that may serve as the basis for a news media bargaining law. In March 2023, Google launched its Taiwan News Digital Co-Prosperity Fund, pledging to spend NT$300 million over three years to support the Taiwanese news industry.

Resources & Events

The Issue

The public’s perceived relevance of journalists and the role they play in providing fact-based accounting of events and issues is an essential ingredient in building policy that protects a strong, diverse and independent press, a crucial principle of democracy. Yet, achieving relevance seems harder than ever. 

The internet provides new opportunities for producing news, telling stories and reaching and connecting with audiences. It also poses new challenges – including entirely new structures and formats of news as well as a wider range of content and creators competing for the public’s attention, trust and value. The public’s ability to share information and opinions through social media also holds journalists accountable in ways they weren’t in the age of traditional media.

In a digital environment where publishers no longer serve as the sole gatekeepers of news and information, they must find new ways to stand out by developing relationships with audiences that reflect their lifestyles and habits. This means rethinking the very concept of news: how people define it, what news they’re looking for and where they access it. The “unbundling” of news and its financial structure are only the beginning of what has changed. 

Younger generations require particular attention. In addition to being digital natives, many also have grown up in the social media age, when news is just one of many kinds of content mixed into online spaces which include messaging apps, private groups, video games and social feeds. Information sources are global. With so many choices, access to verified and independent reporting can be difficult. With habits already different from other age groups, how will their relationships with news evolve as they move further into adulthood? More broadly, how do they differentiate news from other kinds of content? What do they look for versus happen upon? How do they recognize brands, if at all? Who do they trust, and why?

Members of historically marginalized and underserved communities also require attention. They often have well-earned skepticism of news media broadly, having been historically underrepresented in newsrooms and misrepresented in (and actively harmed by) news coverage. They face unequal targeting from disinformation campaigns and often have less access to news and information. Inequities in representation, coverage and access impact people with disabilities through insufficient accessible and inclusive news, particularly for visually impaired news audiences and/or people with cognitive disabilities. 

Many newsrooms have taken significant steps to connect with and serve marginalized and underserved communities, but there is still much ground to cover. One of the positives of the digital realm is the low cost to publishing, which has enabled the creation of niche news publishers. That said, building audiences can be incredibly challenging because it involves creating content specific populations connect to and value. 

For journalism to be relevant today, publishers must listen to audiences and evaluate what they want and need so they can both meet their audiences’ wants and needs and offer accountable, fact-based work. As important as independent, competitive journalism and an open internet are to the future of functioning societies, neither can be ensured if the press, at large, does not gain the recognition, relevance and trust of audiences in the communities it strives to serve. Publishers and journalists need to think hard about what news means in the future and how people find it, value it and understand who produces it. Neither further regulation nor revenue alone can solve this part of the equation. 

One challenge publishers face is gathering research and analysis that differentiates between their audiences’ expressed desires for news and actual media practices. This research and analysis is complex, expensive and falls largely on the news industry and research communities.

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

Research continues to indicate global public interest and trust in the news media declining and news avoidance rising. Many news avoiders perceive the news as irrelevant for navigating their daily lives. The question of news relevance, and the public’s perceptions of it, tie into a broad range of research topics, including media trust and engagement, the changing media environment and business models, and the public’s news choices and expectations (and those of young news audiences specifically). Together, this work – detailed at various points throughout this issue primer – paints a clear picture of the challenges facing publishers attempting to remain or become relevant to their audiences. 

Moving forward, audience-centered work quantitatively and qualitatively measuring public perceptions and attitudes of news relevance and public trust in non-U.S. and comparative contexts is critical. In many countries, we simply lack evidence-based understandings of what different groups want and need from news publishers. For example, we could move beyond simple assumptions that news for younger audiences needs to have a “youth” slant if the solution is actually hiring young talent and presenting stories in ways and on platforms that align with their lifestyles. 

Research can also push to explore new ways of thinking about news. Many of the decades-old parameters of how news is defined no longer apply, making it less clear what news means to people today. Many initiatives aiming to connect with audiences – such as explanatory, “good news,” solutions or constructive journalism – are also untested, and their effectiveness (as well as whether audiences actually want them) is still unclear. And, while recent research has told us much about how audiences (including young people) either intentionally or incidentally consume digital news, opportunities remain for further exploring how specific audiences navigate an increasingly mediated and fragmented digital news environment.

State of Legislation

Legislation might not be explicitly designed to address the challenges of news relevance, but it nonetheless serves as a motivating factor behind a range of policies at the intersection of journalism and technology. This includes legislative debates addressed across several of CNTI’s issue primers:

• Our issue primer addressing economic support for news outlines policies intended to support commercial, public and local media through various funding mechanisms, which may offer ways for journalists and publishers to focus on important connections with the public. However, it is often unclear whether these responses address, or even consider, what the public desires or how they connect with news today, which are central for the news media to remain relevant with audiences.
• In our issue primer on artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism, we consider how automation offers opportunities for news productivity and innovation at the same time that it risks enabling disinformation, obscuring source attribution and undermining public trust in news. These questions of trust will continue to be influenced by how publishers, technology companies and policymakers handle AI transparency and accountability.
• In our issue primer on addressing disinformation, we detail global concerns about the rise of false and misleading information online as well as the type of content the public tends to perceive as mis- and disinformation. These perceptions have critical insights into which sources audiences trust and consider relevant.

Resources & Events

The Issue

The internet is enmeshed in virtually every aspect of modern life. Most often, the public’s online experiences flow through digital platforms, which serve as intermediaries between the content being delivered and the individuals consuming it. That provides convenience but also raises serious concerns. A central one is how much control digital platforms have, or should have, over what people see, especially when it comes to news and information, and how transparent digital platforms’ decision-making processes, typically conducted through the use of algorithms, needs to be.

Each digital platform, and its algorithmic infrastructure, operates under its own rules and conventions to determine which content is and is not allowed as well as what content is prioritized on the platform. Algorithmic choices have far-reaching implications ranging from determining user experiences by selecting one news story over another to facilitating hate speech, disinformation and violence. 

Policymakers, journalists, social media researchers, civil society organizations, private corporations and members of the public are raising awareness of and questions about what are often-opaque digital platform practices related to content selection and moderation processes. The global news industry in particular – which relies to a significant degree on digital intermediaries to reach audiences – has articulated the need for a better understanding of how algorithms rank, boost, restrict and recommend content (including, but not limited to, news) and target consumers. Without a better understanding of how these algorithms are currently built, it is difficult for publishers to work within their constraints to reach audiences or to play any role in determining how algorithms should be built to promote an informed public.

Thus, in addition to ensuring that algorithms are designed to identify fact-based, independent journalism (a topic CNTI addresses in a separate issue primer), it is critical to enhance transparency in and accountability for how digital platform algorithms function.

The key challenge is that regulating or mandating transparency is more complex than it appears, with many elements that need to be thought through. What forms of transparency are necessary and most likely to be effective for protecting and promoting access to high-quality, diverse and independent news? What does transparency mean to policymakers, journalists, researchers and the public? How can we enable algorithmic transparency in ways that protect against political and commercial manipulation or abuse and ensure user privacy? What are its limitations? What systems or entities should be beholden to these levels of transparency? And who should be empowered to set these rules? 

Addressing the questions introduced in this primer is a critical first step toward developing approaches to algorithmic accountability that support an independent, competitive press and an informed society. Policymakers and other stakeholders can benefit from a more nuanced understanding of what transparency can, and cannot, accomplish as well as what new risks could be introduced. Policymakers must be forward-thinking about how and where algorithms may be used in the future, what data could be exposed and who could ultimately gain access to it as a result of increased transparency.

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

Over the past decade, questions surrounding digital platform governance have moved to the forefront of political, legal and academic debates. Recently, a breadth of interdisciplinary research has focused on social media platforms and messaging apps central to global journalistic work as well as on the broader range of software companies and sharing or gig economy apps central to contemporary online commerce. 

Much of this research fits into two categories: governance of social media and governance by social media. Research focused specifically on digital platform algorithmic transparency represents one small segment of work in this field. 

To date, this research has been far more theoretical than empirical, largely due to a lack of data (as we note in greater detail below) and the slow-moving nature of legislative policy, but it still sheds light on the varying forms of transparency different stakeholders expect. For instance, public transparency via disclosures looks different from, and accomplishes different aims than, research transparency via data access. 

Research findings have also noted the limitations of algorithmic transparency alone as a means of establishing digital platform accountability as well as the challenges various legislative efforts face in addressing algorithmic transparency, ranging from potential free expression violations to individual privacy infringements. These limitations have led some experts to call for forms of digital platform accountability beyond algorithmic transparency. 

Collectively, this work also reveals how little has changed, both via research and policy, in almost a decade of calls for algorithmic accountability.

Looking forward, there is much that we do not yet know about digital platforms’ algorithmic infrastructures. Research in this area is critical to inform current debates about internet governance. Experts have called for independent researchers and civil society to be granted more access to the inner workings of digital platform technology companies, the algorithms they develop and the trace data they collect – particularly as digital platforms steadily move away from more open models of free data sharing through their APIs. Of course, what access to give to whom is itself part of the debate about transparency. Still, access, when it has the appropriate safeguards, can help to better inform policy-making and contribute to democratic processes as a form of checks and balances on government and corporate power.

State of Legislation

Content moderation is the element of transparency that has, to date, received the most policy attention. A wide range of policy initiatives around the world have begun, albeit slowly, to regulate content moderation processes and/or government takedown requests on digital platforms, which introduce opportunities and risks. We address some of these in a separate issue primer. 

Legislative policy around addressing algorithmic transparency and accountability more broadly is still nascent. While some technology companies have taken steps internally to improve organizational transparency, governments are beginning to consider policy initiatives that require specific forms of platform accountability, with a focus on (1) supporting research access to data, (2) protecting user data privacy and (3) disclosing certain content moderation practices. 

Some experts have cautioned against the risk that poorly designed transparency laws could become a mechanism for state intervention in and control over platforms’ editorial policies. In contexts like the U.S. with strong constitutional protections of free expression, it is unclear whether the government can mandate transparency. 

The establishment of international ethical frameworks for platform accountability is complicated by the fact that most institutional structures for oversight, such as review boards or ethics committees, vary greatly by country. Nonetheless, policymakers, particularly in Europe and the U.S., have called for international cooperation when it comes to facilitating transparency and access to cross-platform research. Experts have also called for multi-stakeholder and (supra-)national legislative efforts to govern digital spaces.

Even if not intentional, policymakers need to consider that a legislative framework in any one country has the potential to influence regulation globally. For example, a rule-of-law-based approach, while effective in stable democracies, could later serve as a blueprint for suppression elsewhere.

Notable Legislation

European Union

The Digital Services Act (DSA) entered into force in November 2022. Among other obligations, the act requires platforms to take further steps to address the quality of content online, including evaluating and reducing risks and offering or adapting content moderation tools. Concerns about the act include how platforms will identify risks, how regulators will monitor these standards and whether individual countries will follow through with the regulations.

Read more here.

United States

The reintroduced Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (along with the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act) includes provisions for researcher access to platform data, public access to advertising libraries and disclosures on viral content. The reintroduced Internet PACT Act would require platforms to explain content moderation practices. The Biden administration may seek a deal with EU regulators to harmonize researcher access with Digital Services Act provisions.

Read more here.

Resources & Events

The Issue

The spread of false and misleading information is not a new problem and appears in many forms: online and offline, through public and private channels and across a variety of mediums. In a world with growing digital media platforms (where false and misleading information is rapidly spread and, at times, amplified), new technologies for digital manipulation, political upheavals in the Global North, coordinated election disinformation and hostile propaganda campaigns, problematic COVID-19 information, rampant denial of climate science and declining trust in institutions and news, the credibility of information the public gets online has become a global concern. 

Of particular importance, and the focus of this primer, is the impact of disinformation – false information created or spread with the intention to deceive or harm – on electoral processes, political violence and information systems around the world.

The level and impact of disinformation campaigns around the world have a wide range. Disinformation may come from people doctoring photos and creating memes that go viral, transnational actors and trolls seeking to sow distrust and confusion, and elected officials attempting to win elections, maintain power or incite hatred. 

Governments around the world are taking action to curb disinformation: some with the goal of supporting an informed citizenry and others with the goal of undermining it. Actions taken by one entity can impact other countries when groups in one country learn from and model successful efforts elsewhere. Digital platforms and interest groups have also put in place content moderation processes to stem disinformation (though some platforms have begun to move away from these efforts), but these can vary by language and context.

Among the many well-intended legislative proposals to address disinformation, one overarching concern is that the vagueness of what constitutes disinformation (especially the difficulty of interpreting actors’ intent) can result in policy that controls the press and limits free expression. Even legislation aimed at supporting an informed citizenry can potentially lead to restrictions on both the news media and the general public within a country. Further, policies that target disinformation can easily serve as models for authoritarian regimes or antidemocratic actors to exploit. In these cases, the actual – and, at times, intended – effects are restriction of media freedom, censorship of opposing voices and control of free expression. 

Thus, it is critical to balance the opportunities and risks of policy responses to the challenge of disinformation.

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

In recent years, as governments, platforms and funders turned their attention and investments toward policy and technical solutions to address mis- and disinformation (though this has started to wane), academic and media attention to the topic has dramatically increased. The research to date has produced helpful insights, including putting the scope of mis- and disinformation in context with other online content. The research field also has several shortcomings that reveal the need for a deeper and more global approach:

• Many studies of mechanisms to stem mis- and disinformation, such as fact–checking (which has leveled off), corrections, and media literacy initiatives, are robust in their methods but may be too piecemeal or too limited to lay out the full scope of the issue and what may or may not work to address it. Other interventions such as content labels, classifications, warnings or “pre-bunking” have proven to be counter productive or inconsistently effective in practice. Even when strategies seem to work, it remains unclear whether the effects last.
• More broadly, drawbacks to existing research on disinformation include: concentration around a few wealthy democracies, disproportionate attention to the Global North and English-speaking communities, inconsistent concepts for and definitions of problematic information, limited understanding of the effects of media and media technologies, an overemphasis on social media platforms like Twitter and an underemphasis of the historical and political contexts of disinformation. 
• Some experts openly caution against the outsized influence of the current research on policy and political responses to disinformation, which they say has contributed to problematic actions or policies that threaten press freedom and human rights. 

Future work could provide more systematic global research needed to design more effective measures against mis- and disinformation. This includes studying the scale and impact of mis- and disinformation in countries outside of the U.S. and in comparative contexts. For instance, it is unclear whether strategies that are proven to be effective in countries with higher education and literacy levels would also apply elsewhere. There is also a need for understanding the agents and infrastructures involved in the spread of mis- and disinformation online and offline, particularly when it comes to video and image-based content as well as messaging applications. Finally, more data and research is needed to understand the effects that laws against disinformation – and related government action against platforms – have on civil liberties.

State of Legislation

The global landscape around what legislators consider harmful content or disinformation is diverse, often complicated and reaches back centuries in some countries. Legislators’ treatment of disinformation has ranged from a desire to protect election integrity against domestic or foreign interference to obvious schemes to stifle political dissent. There has been a considerably greater effort to regulate what can be said and by whom in recent years, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts to respond to disinformation are critical, but policy must not set the stage for the dismantling of an independent press or an open internet. Specific areas of concern include:

• Both highly democratic countries and authoritarian regimes increasingly regulate online discourse. The latter regularly target critical voices under the banner of tackling disinformation, often by abusing a state of crisis or emergency to justify state censorship, and often without time limits. Measures may either have vague wordingand broad scope, thus intentionally or unintentionally creating room for misuse, or may be too narrow in scope to effectively combat disinformation.

• Sanctions within the legislative framework include financial penalties, jail time, bandwidth restrictions, advertising bans and blocking, depending on whether they address individuals or companies. Several challenges remain, including how to enforce regulations across borders (if the source for disinformation comes from a wholly different legal environment) as well as how to prevent “chilling effects” and self-censorship in newsrooms for fear of punishment.

• Even non-authoritarian governments have vastly different approaches toward what they deem illegal content. In the EU, companies hosting others’ data are liable if, upon actual knowledge of it, they fail to act and remove illegal content. This fundamentally differs from existing immunities in countries like the U.S., likely due to its historical commitment to free speech. This legal patchwork creates further challenges for transnational corporations.

• Despite the wealth of evidence that disinformation flows both top-down and bottom-up, policy attempting to address top-down disinformation (e.g., from domestic politicians or celebrities and foreign governments) has largely been absent while there has been an overwhelming focus on bottom-up mis- and disinformation (e.g., within platforms and their users).

As disinformation receives growing attention by elected leaders and academics, there should be a similar focus on legislative attempts to face a rapidly changing information environment. As much as possible, efforts need to be rooted in a clear understanding of the actors and their differing roles as well as in protection for an independent press, freedom of expression and fundamental human rights. Both the inadequacies and best practices of existing global legislation must be discussed openly. Additionally, in rule-of-law countries, there is a need for more political and public awareness that legislation may be weaponized by authoritarian regimes, worsening already restrictive situations for human rights groups, political opposition and independent news media.

Notable Legislation

Australia

Australia’s parliament is drafting legislation that would give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) the ability to fine digital platforms if they fail to remove mis- and disinformation. Currently, news publisher content is excluded from oversight. Concerns include how the bill will define mis- and disinformation, how and to what extent the ACMA would govern this process and what mechanisms will exist for appeals.

Brazil

Brazil’s PL 2630 (known as the “Fake News” bill) failed a fast-track vote in April 2022 and stalled again in May 2023. Among other features, PL 2630 would require platforms to detect and remove illegal content. Concerns about the bill include its threat to free expression and potential to compensate creators of disinformation. Aggressive platform responses to shape public debate received international criticism, and experts noted concerns with the overall escalation of responses.

Read more here.

China

In May 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China launched a campaign to close more than 100,000 online accounts that disseminate what the CAC referred to as “fake news,” including AI-generated impersonations of state-controlled media.

Croatia

As of late 2023, the Croatian government is considering legislation that would make leaking information before and during a criminal trial illegal. Members of the Croatian press are concerned the proposed legislation could be used to target both whistleblowers and the journalists they contact. The president of Croatia and other government officials claim the proposal is aimed at protecting the validity of investigations and assuring the presumption of innocence.

European Union

Approved in November 2022, the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) package aimed to update the existing EU legal framework and address issues such as illegal content, transparent advertising and disinformation. It seeks to harmonize various national laws created in recent years. Service providers will have until January 2024 to comply with its provisions.

Hungary

In 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hungary’s parliament passed measures including jail terms for journalists and others spreading pandemic “misinformation.”

Nicaragua

In 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicaragua’s congress passed measures regulating what can be published on social media platforms and by news publishers, including jail terms for publishing “false and/or misrepresented information.” The legislation has been condemned as attempts to silence political opposition to President Daniel Ortega.

Papua New Guinea

Proposed in early 2023, the Papua New Guinea government’s draft national media development policy to promote “a professional, ethical, and responsible media industry” would require “media outlets” and journalists to apply for accreditation or a license. The policy notes that it is intended to address misinformation, among other goals, but offers a narrow window for stakeholder feedback and may undermine media independence and freedoms.

Russia

In January 2017, amendments to Russia’s № 208-FZ entered into force that made owners of news aggregators liable for spreading so-called “fake news.” Links to news items that originate verbatim from media outlets registered in Russia (and thus state-regulated) are exempt from liability. The law has effectively created a mechanism of media control through existing media regulation structures. Concerns include the amendments’ vague wording increasing state intervention and power.

Taiwan

Taiwan’s government, facing a barrage of foreign disinformation, has established government initiatives and partnerships with technology companies like Line to track and debunk disinformation. Policymakers have considered bills to curb disinformation on TikTok. In February 2023, proposed amendments to Taiwan’s defense mobilization act included setting penalties for spreading disinformation. Concerns include whether this could be used to silence domestic political dissent.

Türkiye

In October 2022, Turkish parliament adopted legislation that allowed for jailing journalists and social media users for spreading “disinformation,” significantly threatening press freedom and free speech in the country.

United Kingdom

The U.K.’s Online Safety Act, a complicated and sweeping set of measures, is intended to counter a broad range of digital harms. Measures that would have forced social media platforms to remove “legal but harmful” content were cut after critics argued the legislation threatened free expression. The Online Safety Act was passed by Parliament in October 2023. 

Resources & Events

The Issue

The display of news content on digital platforms deviates from the traditional news model by decoupling news production from news distribution. In addition to news organizations’ own digital distribution, technology companies’ algorithms distribute news by selecting, filtering, ranking and bundling news for consumers. News organizations increasingly depend on digital intermediaries to reach audiences through these means, and the public, in turn, relies on digital intermediaries to access news. Social media platforms, search engines, news aggregators and video-sharing services are becoming the dominant means for news consumption across the world. While these pathways increase news access and reach, they also introduce two challenges: the algorithmic selection process is usually opaque to news publishers and the public (who both rely on it), and the algorithmic selection results have the potential to expose the public to lower-quality news and information.

In addition to addressing transparency in how digital platform algorithms function (a topic CNTI addresses in a separate issue primer), there is a need to understand how to ensure fact-based, independent journalism rises to the top on digital platforms. Both publishers and digital platforms face challenges over how to determine the newsworthiness of editorial content. In particular, how can algorithms find, select and prioritize accurate, evidence-based content? This is important in enabling:

• An informed public. News reporting remains critical to supporting an informed public. With the digital environment open to both well- and ill-intended actors, algorithmic selections risk delivering lower-quality or erroneous content to the public. In addition, it is possible that amid declining revenues, some publishers may attempt to prioritize and elevate content selected and amplified by platform algorithms over coverage driven by public interest.
• Journalism’s sustainability. News publishers increasingly rely on digital platforms to reach a broader audience, to drive more traffic to their own websites or apps and to increase subscriptions and donations. Less than a quarter (22%) of news audiences say they prefer to start their news journeys with a news website or app, down 10 percentage points since 2018. Instead, social media platforms play an increasingly critical role in news consumption. Amid efforts to seek more revenue from algorithmically driven news consumption (discussed in a separate CNTI issue primer), the opportunities digital platforms provide for exposure and reach to fact-based, independent content remain critical for many publishers. There is also the real possibility of platforms shifting away from news altogether which, at least in our current structures, would almost certainly harm publishers’ ability to reach audiences and inhibit the public’s ability to access legitimate news sources and information. 
• Digital platforms’ relevance, trust and revenue. Although news content typically makes up only a small portion (according to Facebook, around 3-4%) of digital platform content, platforms that provide independent and fact-based news content reap the benefits of increased relevance, credibility and some revenue when they display ads next to links or snippets and collect user data for targeted advertising. News generally improves the quality and range of content on digital platforms, whose aim is to entice users to spend as much time as possible in their “walled gardens.” 

Behind the challenge of ensuring that algorithms identify and promote fact-based, independent journalism, is the influence digital platforms possess through subtly guiding how society creates and discovers content. Digital platforms have evolved beyond the role of distribution channels to exert direct and indirect editorial influence (though some have begun to shift away from news). For example, in the past decade, digital platforms have incentivized particular types of content (e.g., live video, short video) and set design standards (e.g., subscription policy, anti-cloaking). As a result, editorial decision-making in a competitive, data-driven news market is increasingly based on third-party choices, resulting in newsrooms optimizing online editorial content for clicks, shareability and engagement. 

These dynamics signal the growing importance of ensuring that platform algorithms are structured in a way to identify and promote fact-based, independent journalism. There is a clear need for both legal and organizational policy when it comes to algorithmic transparency. There is also a critical need for cross-industry conversation and collaboration. There is evidence that collaboration leads to increased visibility of fact-based journalism by, for example, changing algorithms (and including human validation) to prioritize and elevate original reporting over standard ranking considerations. Is there a role for news publishers in shaping these algorithmic processes? And, what do publishers need from digital platforms to be able to serve the public and make effective and informed decisions about digital news content?

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

The impact of algorithms on news media has been recognized as a critical area of research. The central academic debates focus on the risks and opportunities algorithmically ranked news presents to individuals and society, digital platform accountability and the shift from mass media distribution to personalized recommendation systems. Scholars across a range of fields have increasingly analyzed the critical relationship between those who manage algorithms and those who produce news. 

Researchers have found evidence of publishers adjusting – even lowering – editorial standards to boost their position in ranking and recommendation systems. Researchers have also expressed concerns about accessing, understanding and evaluating the algorithms that govern a range of news-related processes. These concerns involve the opaque, “black box” nature of these algorithms as well as the increasing suppression of researchers’ access to digital trace data (which CNTI addresses in detail in a separate issue primer).

While it is clear that platform algorithms subtly guide trends and drive how people discover content, there is little evidence of exactly how they work or what they reward or amplify. Thus, it is important to differentiate between what the data firmly reveal about algorithms and news and what there is not yet evidence to support:

• In spite of public attention to fears of algorithmic “filter bubbles,” studies in the UK and several other countries consistently find that algorithmic selection by digital platforms generally leads to slightly more diverse news consumption (though self-selection may hinder this, particularly among political partisans). 
• Algorithmic rankings can exert influence over how people engage with and evaluate news.
• Some work suggests that emotional language and out-group animosity are more likely to go “viral” or be shared on social media – trends that rely on user behavior alongside platform and algorithmic design. 
• Historically, social media platforms like Facebook overwhelmingly weighted comments as more important than other types of interactions, leading posts that explicitly or implicitly encouraged commenting (e.g. divisive content) to gain more popularity. But transparency around algorithms has limitations because the code is not static: Platforms’ formulas for engagement are frequently changing.
• Research demonstrates that platforms are frequently changing algorithms and investing in both manual and algorithmic moderation processes to minimize the spread of disinformation. At the same time, problematic or extremist content is more likely to be amplified by certain digital platforms’ recommendation systems than by others.
• News consumers are generally skeptical of algorithmic selection of online news but are equally wary of news selection by editors and journalists. Similarly, people often perceive news produced by algorithms as equally or more credible than (or simply not discernible from) news selected by human journalists. 

There is opportunity for future work to serve as an intermediary between digital platforms and news organizations, pushing for more transparency to fully understand the complexity of algorithmic mechanisms and where the balance may lie between demystifying processes to promote fact-based, independent news and information while protecting against political or commercial manipulation. On the policy side, the effects of recent digital platform legislation on newsroom practices and reach are unclear. Establishing best practices, both in digital platforms and editorial environments, will depend on the findings of research in this area.

State of Legislation

Legislative approaches to address platform algorithms in regard to news content and distribution range from direct government intervention to self-regulation. While laws and proposals vary by country, they face a common challenge: the “pacing problem” – technology moving faster than the law.

We discuss two key groups of approaches addressing the impacts of algorithm-driven services with policy in separate issue primers. The first group appears in countries where the emphasis is to protect citizens against safety risks and to increase algorithmic transparency and accountability. The second group appears in countries like Australia, Canada, Brazil and the U.S. where the aim is to require large platform companies to negotiate commercial deals with news publishers for their content. Within both sets of approaches, it is unclear how to assess what “quality” news is. 

Legislation in these areas can greatly impact – and even supersede – what news publishers and technology companies can do to promote fact-based, independent content. In some cases, media bargaining structures, which often primarily benefit legacy and larger publishers, would have determined these actions. Thus, legislation may end up being the arbiter of what content appears online. Empirical evidence is needed to better understand how regulation impacts the algorithmic information landscape in practice, with intended and unintended consequences for fact-based editorial content and news consumption.

Notable Legislation

Council of Europe

In March 2022, the Council of Europe adopted legislative recommendations calling for prioritizing “quality content” and independent oversight in online platforms over search engine and social media distribution practices. “Quality” journalism is defined as publishers committed “to the pursuit of truth, fairness and accuracy, to independence, transparency and humanity, and a strong sense of public interest in promoting accountability in all sectors of society.”

Canada

Several elements of Canadian Parliament’s new law, Bill C-18, pertain directly to the challenge of assessing “quality” journalism. The bill requires publishers to meet government commission standards to be eligible for bargaining, which may be used as a template for government bodies to serve as arbiters of content. Without a clearly established basis for payments, the use of content reach and volume as key metrics for payments may incentivize low-quality content. An “undue preference” provision protecting publishers from platform retaliation may impact existing algorithmic structures by prioritizing fact-based, original reporting.

Read more here.

Russia

In January 2017, amendments to № 208-FZ made owners of news aggregators liable for spreading so-called “fake news.” Links to news items that originate verbatim from media outlets registered in Russia (and thus state-regulated) are exempt from liability. The law has effectively created a mechanism of media control through existing media regulation structures. There is concern that the amendments’ vague wording increases state intervention and power.

European Union

The Digital Services Act (DSA) entered into force in November 2022. Among other obligations, the act requires platforms to take further steps to address the quality of content online, including evaluating and reducing risks and offering or adapting content moderation tools. Concerns about the act include how platforms will identify risks, how regulators will monitor these standards and whether individual countries will follow through with the regulations.

Read more here.

Resources & Events

The Issue

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that describes the legal rights a creator has over a wide range of content, including books, music, film, artwork, software and images. Copyrights give creators the ability to prevent others from using their work without permission and to be compensated for approved uses by others. Use of copyrighted works is dependent on copyright laws in the country of origin as well as various international copyright conventions and treaties that have been adopted to provide clearer rights for creators in a global economy.

Journalists and news publishers create original text, photo, audio and video content. They also incorporate copyrighted content into their work by quoting, paraphrasing or providing evidence from outside content. In many countries, “fair use” and “fair dealing” provisions or “quotation rights” allow for limited use of copyrighted material in circumstances such as journalism, research and teaching without the need to obtain permission from the copyright holder. But, depending on the legal system, these allowances vary significantly.

The digital age has introduced new copyright use cases that are not sufficiently addressed in current law. For example, now news aggregators, social media sites and search engines often publish headlines or snippets of and links to a publisher’s news story. Another new use case emerged with the creation of generative AI, which ‘learns’ from amassed digital content created by others to produce its own derivative content, which may or may not be considered original created work. Journalists increasingly use generative AI in news production, and the original content is also used to train AI tools.

Modernizing copyright law and fair use doctrine for the global digital age is increasingly central to an open internet and competitive news environment and raises a slew of new challenges. How will policy differentiate between snippets of licensed content in a citizen’s post or email, a news story, a freelancer’s news column, a search result, a news feed, and more? What elements of building a generative AI tool fall under fair use? How should societies define original work created in a global, digital environment? While questions surrounding AI and its use in journalism are addressed more fully in a separate issue primer, rapid technological developments reflect how important it is that copyright policy is forward-looking.

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

Research on issues of copyright for a free press has largely focused on media policy, with an overwhelming emphasis on U.S. fair use doctrine and European Union (EU) copyright reform. Work in this area has indicated a number of challenges facing intellectual property holders and journalists in the digital age, particularly with the rise of content aggregation, freelance work and changing media business models. Researchers note a lack of clarity around (1) what separates legitimate information-sharing from harmful copyright infringement and (2) how to define news or set professional standards for news aggregation. While protections of creative work will be critical to fulfill the mission of a free and robust press, research also cautions against the effects of copyright protection that is too strong—including press censorship and the restriction of competition, innovation and public access to information. 

In addition to global and comparative research in this area, it would be valuable for future work to explore how digital journalists understand and navigate complex and often opaque copyright regulations, the effects of enhanced copyright regulation on news audience behaviors and the implications of such provisions for smaller and/or down-market publishers and freelance news creators.

State of Legislation

Governments and intergovernmental bodies around the world are working to update copyright laws for the digital age and a global media environment. These efforts present new legal challenges and tensions for publishers, technology companies and those involved in the creation, flow and regulation of digital content. Much of the current work centers around the role of copyright in online searches and news aggregation. At times, copyrights are affected through copyright-adjacent legislation, such as Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, while in others, such as the European Union copyright law, have been updated directly with the aim of increasing protections for news publishers and content creators. 

As research on these policies indicates, both indirect and direct copyright legislation can carry risks to an independent press, citizen journalism and other elements of an open internet. Specifically, research finds important deficiencies in current approaches, including a lack of clarity in defining what constitutes copyright protection, and raises questions about the effectiveness of these laws in reducing online copyright infringement. Further, little has been done yet to effectively address the rise of new technologies, such as generative AI, in online content creation and distribution.

Notable Legislation

Australia

In 2021, Australian regulators adopted the News Media Bargaining Code, which allows the government to designate digital platforms as subject to the code if publishers cannot reach reasonable agreements for use of their content. This provision does not explicitly address copyright issues – and, in fact, relies on antitrust rather than copyright law – but has nonetheless been used to establish publishers’ rights to be paid for news content.

European Union

In 2019, the EU Copyright Directive adopted copyright rules for digital platforms. Articles 15 and 17 require certain publishers to buy licenses and allow publishers the right to claim revenue from platforms (exempting the use of hyperlinking and short blurbs). Concerns include potential limits to free expression and access to information and blocks of legitimate content. The EU AI Act, adopted in June 2023, requires all copyrightable data used in AI model training to be published.

South Africa

Beginning in 2015, South Africa’s government began to introduce attempts at copyright reform via the Copyright Amendment Bill and the Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill, which included the introduction of fair use doctrine. After a significant amount of outside pressure from the U.S. and EU cultural industries, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa postponed the legislation in June 2020, citing constitutional concerns.

United States

The U.S. Copyright Office’s 2021 review of copyright protections for publishers in relation to news aggregators concluded that the challenges facing news funding do not appear to be solved by copyright reforms. In March 2023, the office announced a new initiative to study the impact of AI on the copyright system along with new copyright registration guidance. The reintroduced Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) could also influence copyright law for some forms of linking.

Resources & Events

The Issue

The rise of the global internet in its earliest days signaled a potential for free and open societies to transcend borders and connect people through digital civic spaces and to provide citizens with a global repository of information. The internet, as a public good, can provide access to reliable and independent news as well as exposure to diverse sources and perspectives. But amid changing geopolitical contexts, new technologies and the threat of online abuse and disinformation, policymakers around the world are increasingly leading governments into rethinking models of internet governance. 

At the core of these discussions is who controls how the global internet functions. Often, this control is negotiated between governments and technology companies that preside over online spaces. 

These political, commercial and technological pressures risk splintering the internet into a collection of different networks and user experiences based on one’s location in the world (also referred to as “fragmentation” or “balkanization”). In fact, splintering is already occurring in some places; two users may encounter wholly different internet experiences based solely on their location. While practices that result in splintering are often enacted by autocratic regimes – via rhetoric, technological developments and legislation – these types of practices are also increasingly central to internet policy debates in democratic societies. 

Regulations intended to restrict and/or control online environments can involve several tactics including content takedowns, blocked or rerouted websites or platforms, government-ordered network disruptions and/or a version of the internet entirely closed-off from outside providers or services.

In weighing the challenges of this issue, it is helpful to distinguish between two types of systems: those where a “splinternet” is intentionally sought out, often to assert state control over data and digital assets or to cut off public access to independent information, and those where a “splinternet” is an unanticipated byproduct of governments’ (or even corporations’) attempts to prevent the spread of disinformation, address legitimate online harms and/or protect citizens’ data from foreign interference. 

There are crucial differences between these two systems, but both introduce risks if they do not include safeguards that protect both user rights and a free flow of global information. The preservation of an open internet is especially critical for the global protection of an independent, competitive news media. Journalists depend on access to open digital communication channels to both document and distribute news, particularly when platforms have been infiltrated or blocked by the state. 

It also becomes increasingly difficult for journalists to get any information across fragmented digital spaces. A number of organizations that analyze internet freedom have found there are a growing number of countries with restricted access to international information sources (see the Notable Research section for more details). These are powerful threats to press freedom and safety as well as to open public access to information.

As governments consider different approaches to digital regulation, some policy responses risk facilitating a “splinternet,” while others can protect societies from it. The challenge is to ensure that the public’s ability to use the internet to create, share and access information as well as journalists’ ability to report and distribute it is protected – both within and across borders. 

At its most harmful, the “splinternet” enshrines government and/or corporate power in ways that erode human rights, including those of free expression and privacy. Greater attention to and awareness of these effects, even when unintended, will be critical for policymaking that protects and promotes an open internet.

What Makes It Complex

Internet “fragmentation” does not have a singular definition, so policies responding to the risks associated with fragmentation must be tailored to the particular context.

In academic and policy circles, the concept of internet “fragmentation” is broad and often contested. However, experts frequently cite two dimensions of fragmentation: technical fragmentation, referring to systems being completely disconnected from the global internet (e.g. China’s Great Firewall), and content or user experience fragmentation, referring to individuals having different online experiences depending on where they are in the world. For the latter, users may have technical connectivity, but still face restrictions in what they can access (e.g. only displaying government-approved sources in a Google search or a Twitter feed, or Netflix’s geographic controls that vary content by location). Each of these types of internet fragmentation introduces different risks, requiring different approaches to address them.

Bans on specific digital platforms have become a common response to concerns about online safety and disinformation, but they increase the risk of internet fragmentation, threaten free expression and can encourage copycat legislation.

A growing list of governments around the world have considered or taken action against TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance amid ongoing debates around two key issues: the potential national security risks of allowing the Chinese government to access sensitive user data and/or to use the app to distribute disinformation, and the rising concern about children’s online safety on digital platforms. Some experts argue more clarity and transparency is needed from governments’ when they cite evidence of cybersecurity risks, given that the amount and type of user data TikTok collects is not out of step with other platform companies or American data brokers. Proposed age restrictions on platforms risk violating free speech, splintering the online world and leading platforms to narrow their offerings to avoid legal ramifications. Outside of formal legislative processes, publishers, government agencies, intergovernmental agencies and universities have begun to restrict TikTok on employee devices.

These bans threaten free expression and an open internet on several fronts – most notably that they inhibit citizens’ fundamental rights to access and distribute information in democratic societies. Some legislation banning TikTok requires a technical surveillance infrastructure that would put privacy and civil liberties at risk. Further, this kind of legislation can serve as examples for autocratic governments. For example, Russia and Zambia have temporarily restricted citizens’ access to encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp because the platforms refused to break end-to-end encryption, which would have allowed government agencies to access user data. Among the many complexities noted here is the question: Are there times when platform bans are justified? For instance, in Brazil, Telegram was blocked due to its failure to comply with a lawful request from the Brazilian Supreme Court. Considerations of context, along with any unintended consequences of policy proposals, must be taken into account in policy debates.

State of Research

Research in the fields of internet studies and governance – particularly over the past decade – has resulted in the development of a broad set of terms reflecting similar concepts including internet governance, digital sovereignty and internet fragmentation or balkanization. Some of these terms have shifted in meaning and/or been contested as societies have undergone digital transformations. That does not mean past research loses its value, but it can make it challenging for researchers to build upon one another’s work. 

To date, much of the work on internet governance has centered on authoritarian contexts (with a particular focus on China and Russia) as well as some research examining the European Union’s digital sovereignty agenda. That said, a growing segment of public-facing research conducted by independent research institutions, open internet advocacy organizations and (inter)governmental bodies (several of which we note in this primer) has focused specifically on assessing the increasing threat of the “splinternet.” This work largely relies upon expert interviews and literature reviews to arrive at a common understanding of the threats and manifestations of the “splinternet” and to recommend policies that protect an open internet.

Because these bodies of research are largely focused on either conceptualizing these issues in the context of policy or studies of critical cases, it is difficult to find systematic evidence of the scope and impact of internet governance legislation. Disagreement over what internet ‘freedom’ or ‘censorship’ entail also means there is little consensus on how to best measure them.

As platform bans become a more commonly discussed approach to addressing online safety and disinformation, research analyzing the scope and impact of these policy debates will be particularly useful. This includes how particular policy language is adopted in one context and readopted elsewhere over time and on a global scale.

State of Legislation

The internet is now a central locus of global policymaking as governments increasingly debate how to regulate digital spaces within their own borders (and, at times, outside of them). Internet governance represents a broad range of stakeholders and mechanisms including national and international legislative policy as well as technological design, company policies and global regulatory institutions.

In many cases, policies or other actions that cause internet fragmentation stem from a push for “digital sovereignty,” or a government’s capacity to control or regulate its citizens’ internet content and their country’s flow of data through its technological infrastructures. Digital sovereignty is often legitimized for being in “the national interest,” though what that means varies drastically in different contexts. For instance, national interest may refer to national security or economic purposes and can take many forms within those realms. 

In some cases, legislation attempts to protect societies from a “splinternet.” In others, legislation risks encouraging a “splinternet” either intentionally or unintentionally.  As we note throughout this primer, this includes direct attempts to develop a closed national intranet, interventions to block access to specific platforms or sources of news and information as well as broader online governance laws that may introduce indirect consequences for free expression and an open internet. For instance, a wave of new online safety regulations in countries and regions including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada promote digital privacy and other protections for citizens and simultaneously risk user experience fragmentation by enhancing controls over what and where content is shown.

Legislative efforts that protect an open internet should consult resources and recommendations provided by global internet experts. These include ensuring that governments can only collect or access online user data for transparent and legitimate purposes, promoting open standards among new technologies and platforms, protecting encryption, maintaining access to internet services and digital platforms, supporting independent online media and addressing the digital divide. It is equally critical that related policy debates at the intersection of news and technology around disinformation, artificial intelligence and algorithmic transparency consider unintended negative impacts of legislation on an open and interoperable internet.

Notable Legislation

Cambodia

The Cambodian government began powering up its proposed “National Internet Gateway” starting in 2022 to manage all online traffic through a centralized government facility and establish a state-controlled web traffic entry point. The government is expected to establish the gateway and enact other policies to tighten control before national elections, and has already begun to block independent news sites. This system restricts a free flow of information between Cambodia and the rest of the world.

China

China’s “Great Firewall” has merged legislation with a sophisticated surveillance and blocking system to prevent Chinese citizens from accessing foreign information sources, internet tools and mobile apps. Chinese companies such as Huawei have also submitted “New IP” proposals to international telecommunications bodies that would fragment its interoperable structure. This system restricts a free flow of information between China and the rest of the world.

Eswatini

In October 2021, internet closures were carried out by autocratic state authorities in response to pro-democracy protests and included shutting down social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. These actions restrict a free flow of information between Eswatini and the rest of the world.

Ethiopia

The Ethiopian government has restricted internet access by suspending access to social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube, often in the wake of protests or political unrest. These bans represent threats to free expression and an open internet.

European Union

The European Union’s sweeping 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) created new means of safeguarding citizens’ personal data but in doing so introduced new concerns around a “splinternet” experience, where one’s location would determine what content is banned. In particular, the GDPR’s ‘right to be forgotten’ risks fact-based investigative journalism including personal data (such as #MeToo stories) qualifying for removal demands.

Read more here.

India

India’s government has expanded digital censorship efforts since 2019 through legislation, internet shutdowns, platform bans and heightened scrutiny of platforms. In 2021, an executive order introduced internet regulations which force technology companies to comply with government surveillance and undermine user rights. It targets end-to-end encryption protocols, requiring messaging apps to trace and reveal senders’ identities. This threatens free expression and an open internet.

Read more here.

Iran

Like China, the Iranian government has nearly complete control over its internet through the National Information Network, a concept developed by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in 2005. This system restricts a free flow of information between Iran and the rest of the world.

Myanmar

In the midst of Myanmar’s early 2021 military coup, soldiers forced telecom operators to shut off the internet, forcing temporary blackouts and using internet restrictions as a means of suppressing protest as well as preventing citizens from accessing and sharing information with the global community. Since then, the military has continued to limit internet access to government-approved websites. This system restricts a free flow of information between Myanmar and the rest of the world.

Russia

In 2019, President Vladimir Putin’s government signed a law establishing its “RuNet” intranet plan, though it has yet to come to fruition. Amid the war in Ukraine, Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian internet infrastructure to cause internet outages. Russia’s media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, stepped up efforts in 2022 to block VPN services, preventing citizens from accessing prohibited online content. This system restricts a free flow of information between Russia and the rest of the world.

United States

In April 2022, the Biden administration announced a partnership signed by 61 nations to establish norms for an open, global internet. While the declaration is largely symbolic, and signatories include countries with declining or inconsistent internet freedoms, some experts note it may steer wavering democracies away from state overreach. New challenges to an open internet have emerged amid proposed TikTok platform bans, threatening free expression and an open internet.

Read more here.

Vietnam

Vietnam’s internet is closely monitored by the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam. The Ministry of Information and Communications has threatened measures such as restricting the operations of platforms such as TikTok due to violations of national laws, citing the presence of “toxic” and anti-government content. In May 2023, the ministry launched a probe into TikTok spanning several departments. These bans represent threats to free expression and an open internet.

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