No abstract

News outlets worldwide increasingly adopt user-and system-driven personalisation to individualise their news delivery. Yet, the technical implementation of news personalisation systems, in particular the one relying on algorithmic news recommenders (ANRs) and tailoring individual news suggestions with the help of user data, often remains opaque. In our article, we examine how news personalisation is used by quality and popular media in three countries with different media accountability infrastructures -Brazil, the Netherlands, and Russia -and investigate how information about personalisation usage is communicated to the news readers via privacy policies. Our findings point out that news personalisation systems are predominantly treated as black boxes that indicate a significant gap between practice and theory of algorithmic transparency, in particular in the non-EU context. Issue 4

This paper argues the AVMSD attaches cooperative responsibility to platforms' organisational control. Firstly, it explores how the new concept of organisational control differs from the editorial control that has traditionally been central to media law, in particular concerning the greater involvement of other stakeholders active on platforms. Secondly, it analyses the measures the AVMSD requires platforms to take with regard to content on their service in light of their organisational control. Finally, it shows how the AVMSD not only requires platforms to assume responsibility for actions under their direct control, but also to enable users and uploaders to exercise their inherent influence differently. The AVMSD consequently moves away from centralised, and towards cooperative responsibility for platforms. The paper concludes by evaluating the choices the AVMSD makes (and fails to make) in the operationalisation of this new responsibility model.

The regulation of political advertising has traditionally been a sensitive issue—unsurprisingly so, as it determines if and how political actors can pay to communicate with voters. Given the differences between national electoral systems and the lack of a consensus on the best regulatory approach, until recently neither the EU, the Council of Europe nor the European Court of Human Rights laid out strict standards. Following mounting concerns over the impact of opaque and manipulative targeted advertising in the 2016 US election and Brexit referendum, the EU’s proposal for a regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising breaks with this trend. This article analyses how the proposal is set to regulate political advertising, and evaluates how the proposed regulation fits into the EU’s competences to regulate democratic processes and affects existing national legal frameworks. The article concludes by assessing the new roles the EU and the Member States assume in political advertising regulation.

No abstract