Democracy

In an interview, Dr. Franziska Brantner MdB comments on the results of the “Actually European!? Citizen expectations of the next German government’s EU policy” study and makes the case for greater German engagement in the fields of climate protection, tax policy and ensuring the rule of law.

The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union and Washington, DC offices hosted a transatlantic online discussion that addressed discrimination of LGBTIQA+ and racial groups through content moderation. Amid the EU discussion on the draft Digital Services Act (DSA) and of the US debate on reforming Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, the event presented the e-papers "The state of content moderation for the LGBTIQA+ community and the role of the EU Digital Services Act" by Christina Dinar, and "Algorithmic misogynoir in content moderation practice" by Brandeis Marshall.

The UK government has some good ideas for improving the rail network, says Ros Taylor. But cheap fuel, costly buses and a deep-seated aversion to road pricing have driven people away from public transport – and that was before the pandemic.

As the federal elections in Germany draw nearer, Angela Merkel’s time as Chancellor, and thus an era of German EU policy-making, is coming to an end. A new German federal government will step onto the EU policy stage – mere months after a united response to the Covid-19 crisis was found in the shape of the EU Recovery Fund, but also after criticism was levied at the EU for its vaccine procurement strategy. This year’s “Actually European!?” study examines the expectations that citizens have of the next German government’s EU policy. Moreover, the long-term study, now in its third year, surveys what Germans perceive to be the country’s role within the EU.  

Gendered disinformation is a form of violence particularly used against politically active women: the weaponisation of gendered stereotypes to attack and undermine women’s position in public life. How can we improve responses to gendered disinformation online? What can platforms do better? What government regulation may be needed, and are the current proposals on the table sufficient?

Disinformation and misinformation thrive in uncertainty and secrecy. While growing awareness within the European Union of the threat posed by malign disinformation campaigns to undermine support for democratic values, and the EU project as a whole, has elicited a number of robust responses, these have mostly targeted external actors. Addressing threats from within Member States poses a more acute challenge, one that will require great thoughtfulness and delicacy to resolve, and require a unanimous collective effort.

The book #FakeYou shows that public and legislative policies used in the fight against disinformation, which have been pursued both in Spain and in other countries because of (or rather, with the excuse of) the so-called “new” phenomenon of fake news, often actually serve to distract from the real solution.

The unsavoury link between oligarchs, the banking sector, the media and politics is what characterizes, in a nutshell, the state of the Greek media landscape. The prolonged financial crisis has had a decisive role in further hampering media freedom in the country, posing a real threat to the quality of democracy in Greece.

Recently, the Hungarian ruling party and its media empire launched a massive campaign against independent policy analysts and opposition parties, accusing them of spreading anti-vaccination views. These campaigns follow a typical method of operation: they start from a single piece of information and end in some sort of discriminatory legislation against independent voices.

When discussing the issue of hate speech in the digital age, we often put the blame on content intermediaries such as Facebook or Twitter. But what happens when hateful speech in the form of party propaganda is indirectly or directly funded by the state, using public money?