Session
Ministry of Culture and Equality
TBD
Theater
Keynote presentations followed by panellist discussions.
Independent editorial media plays a crucial role in open societies, providing the population with reliable information. At the same time, social media platforms have gained an increasing share of users' attention, leading news media outlets to seek audiences and revenue outside of their traditional channels. Search engines and social media platforms have the power to amplify or restrict the dissemination of editorial content, based on AI-driven recommender systems. Today's news media are also reliant on a host of technical infrastructures beyond the platforms for distribution of content to user's devices. Information access and exchange also requires transmission, peering, and cloud infrastructures to circulate data and connect people.
Big tech companies thus shape the conditions for the public’s access to editorial content on their services and influence human rights beyond the use of AI or algorithms. These infrastructure markets are not only attractive investment sectors. They are also consolidating and converging, raising questions about the distribution of power within the material infrastructure of the internet and the reliance of the news media on these structures.
The questions that are raised are what this shift in power means for the independence of the news media, media diversity, freedom of information and infrastructural sovereignty. To ensure free, open and resilient societies, we need to find ways to manage the infrastructural power of platforms. The session will also highlight the impact of connectivity disruptions and content regulation/moderation on freedom of expression and democracy, where we seek to highlight different global perspectives, trends, regulations, challenges and opportunities in dealing with these issues. We engage in these issues with particular attention to the dependencies that small states face in the global networked economy, and the conditions that enable digital sovereignty in the AI era.