Last Friday, I provided expert testimony to a hearing organised by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media. The session was titled “the control of online communication: a threat to media pluralism, freedom of information and human dignity”

The agenda can be found here

In my contribution to the hearing, I drew on my research on the role of online platforms in amplifying hate speech.  My recommendations included a call for policymakers to lobby online platforms to issue warning messages to those using hate speech on their sites, a recognition that content removal might displace the problem to less popular platforms, and for counter-speech interventions to be promoted as a more effective way to address these behaviours.

Many thanks to Eugen Cibotaru for the invitation and his help with the logistics.