Internet

With ear to Global South, Georgia Law Professor Thomas Kadri discusses his “Networks of Empathy” in podcast

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Thomas Kadri joined a recent episode of the “Talking Research” podcast to talk about his research on digital abuse and his article “Networks of Empathy,” just published at Utah Law Review.

The podcast, hosted by India-based Asmita Sood, features interviews with researchers from around the world who study sexual violence across disciplines, with the aim of making academic knowledge more accessible to the public.

Kadri’s interview focused on the challenges of digital abuse and how people are increasingly using networked technologies to engage in harassment, stalking, privacy invasions, and surveillance. He discussed how technology companies should be more mindful of how their platforms facilitate digital abuse, urging decisionmakers at these companies to exhibit empathy toward abuse victims through design and policy choices.

With digital abuse on the rise globally, Kadri’s research explores how extralegal efforts can supplement laws and encourage their enforcement. In his article and this podcast, Kadri embraces a feminist perspective that urges people, and especially men, to speak out against digital abuse in an effort to shift social norms, challenge pernicious stereotypes, and help victims across gender and sexuality spectrums. In this same spirit, Kadri has also encouraged technology companies to hire and consult diversely, including by listening to voices from marginalized groups and people in the Global South who have often been ignored or undervalued by those with power in Silicon Valley.

The podcast episode is available here; Kadri’s article here.

Delivering prestigious Gresham College Fulbright Lecture in London, Georgia Law Professor Lori Ringhand analyzes laws regulating online election campaign spending in US and UK

Pleased today to welcome back Lori A. Ringhand, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, and, this Spring 2019 semester, a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. In connection with her US-UK Fulbright award, Professor Ringhand gave a prestigious lecture this past Tuesday, April 2, in London. Her account of that lecture – available on video – is below.

I recently had the pleasure of delivering the Gresham College Fulbright Lecture at the Museum of London. Gresham College has been offering free public lectures to residents of London for more than 400 years, and has been offering Fulbright lectures in partnership with the US/UK Fulbright Commission for decades.  Recent Gresham lecturers include eminent public law scholar Vernon Bogdanor,  historian and author Timothy Garton Ash, and current Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.

My lecture focused on the challenges faced by lawmakers in the United States and the United Kingdom as they try to ensure that campaign finance laws remain relevant in the age of widespread online electioneering. As both nations have discovered, our existing regimes are not built for a world in which political advertising spreads, rapidly, organically, and often anonymously, through online social media platforms.

Regulators in the US and the UK nonetheless rarely look to each other’s experiences to inform their own thinking in this complex area. The election law systems of each country are seen as so fundamentally different that comparative consideration seems pointless.

As I explained in my Gresham Lecture, I disagree.

The differences in regulatory approaches certainly are real, and significant:

  • In the UK, political spending is limited, and most of it runs through political parties and regulated third-party campaigners, with outside or unregulated groups historically playing little role.
  • In the US, in contrast, political spending is increasingly dominated by outside groups, which can both raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, often entirely outside of the federal regulatory system.

But in regard to regulating online election activity, the similarities between the two nations are much more meaningful than the differences. As I laid out in the talk, the regulatory challenges presented by online electioneering difficult in both principle and practice, but they are fundamentally the same in each country. Consequently, there is a great deal we can learn from each other in this area.

I hope my lecture helps us take a necessary first step in that direction.