"When right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk was shot [the] next thing that followed was typical of any tragedy these days: a whirlwind of online misinformation. Except, it also included AI-generated false claims" from e.g. Grok, Google AI Overviews www.techpolicy.press/what-does-it...

A global call, orchestrated by the Forum on Information and Democracy, urges policy makes to act to protect public interest media. There are many policy tools available. When most governments do not do anything, that is a choice as well. informationdemocracy.org/2025/09/22/p...

"Today," New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger says, "we’re seeing [the anti-press playbook] deployed in the United States, a country long synonymous with press freedom." Read his speech here www.nytco.com/press/ag-sul...

"If the EU ends up legislating [about encryption] on a technically incorrect basis, we could be left with a law that neither protects children nor citizens' right to privacy – but instead makes everyone more vulnerable" @moltke.bsky.social writes. www.dr.dk/nyheder/vide...

What if one could automatically monitor what politicians promise and enhance the ability to check, at scale, whether they deliver? Pledgetracker, by @fullfact.org and researchers, tries to retrieve relevant evidence and reduce human verification effort. Read their preprint here: lnkd.in/ec5gHYV9

Untrustworthy information is a “factor whose relationship with beliefs is contingent upon environmental context, individual predispositions, and exposure volume" and not a uniform influence, Dahlke and Hancock show in paper based on two-wave survey and browsing data tsjournal.org/index.php/jo...

How would it impact people’s perception of news brands if they were transparent about the ideological leanings of their newsroom? In online experiments in US, DuBosar et al evidence of out-group disdain for the "other side", but not on in-group favoritism journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Would a state-funded media ombudsperson with the power to conduct criminal proceedings against news outlets, and potentially much more - as is being considered in Denmark - increase trust in news? Wrote for @politiken on how research suggests it might undermine trust. Links below 1/2

“[Discover] allows Google to funnel more traffic to publishers as traffic from search declines" Buttle says. “Publishers have no choice but to agree or lose their organic search. [It] pulls in the opposite direction to the kind of relationship publishers want.” www.theguardian.com/media/2025/s...

13 media and journalists' associations - including the European Federation of Journalists and News Media Europe - publish joint letter warning against idea of creating a media Ombudsperson in Denmark with the authority to conduct criminal proceedings against news media via.ritzau.dk/pressemeddel...

Do unreliable news sources do better on platforms than on the web? New work by Yang et al challenges this idea, at least for the most widely used platforms. “Only Twitter showed significantly increased visibilities of unreliable sources”, FB and YouTube did not academic.oup.com/joc/advance-... 1/3

Two things to read together - First, the status quo: "The Commission's own data suggests that 99% of its daily workloads rely on US technology: 14% on US public clouds [and] 85% on private cloud ... The remaining 1% runs on France-based OVHcloud." www.euractiv.com/section/tech... 1/2

"“The Trump-Vance FTC will never back down from taking on Big Tech”", the Trump-appointed FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson says. Amidst the warm words, there's a strong 'Nice business you have there. Shame if something should happen to it' vibe here? on.ft.com/4m9d3MQ 1/3

Ahead of US hearing on "Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation" "more than 30 academics researching the EU Digital Services Act and civil liberties sent an open letter [to] correct persistent misconceptions that the DSA is a tool for censorship" husovec.eu/wp-content/u...

Last chance to submit your work on platform governance (in all its different forms) for PlatGovNet2025! Extended abstracts due September 2. Details below.

Millions of users are posting to social media and other platforms in languages with zero moderators, even within the EU. That's the topline finding from an impressive new working paper leveraging newly mandated transparency data under the DSA led by @manueltonneau.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/so...

Submit abstracts for PlatGovNet 2025 by September 2 - and share your work at a free, global, online conference for the interdisciplinary field of people researching platform governance, one of the defining issues of our time.

"Tech isn't about innovation, it's about power and networking chokepoints for power." Strong thread below (on an interesting FT opinion piece) And all very aligned with e.g. Nieborg & Poell's interesting research on institutional platform power journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

🚨Deadline approaching for this years' PlatGov: abstracts welcome till Sept 2nd! Great chance to pitch your research and connect with wonderful people. @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social @digipolicy.bsky.social @wzb.bsky.social

"The West is taking its "eye off the ball" by cutting media funding and "leaving the field open" to Kremlin and others Prof. Hutchings says. Was interviewed for this, stressing we shouldn't take self-promotional claims by propaganda outlets at face value www.bbc.com/news/article...

"People who believe the news is not made for them are reaping far fewer benefits from news, despite consuming more of it than their counterparts". Interesting work from Tabor et al on audience alienation (more common among young +less privileged) and consequences journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Two weeks left to submit to PlatGovNet 2025! We've got a good number of submissions already, make sure to share your extended abstract (800-1000 words) by September if you'd like to join us for this free online conference on platform governance December 1-2.

Misinformation often spreads via the top... "The [fabricated] video ... was eventually shown to be fake — but not before Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk shared the sham report to their millions of followers on X" www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

A good rule of thumb is that everything that autocrats try to control, prohibit, and suppress is among the things that help make us free. Wrote for Politiken about Putin regime's steps towards more censorship, infrastructural control, state support for pliant platforms politiken.dk/search/art10...

Publishers have every reason to fear prospect of zero-click search, but despite headlines about 'apocalypse', at least the sites Chartbeat collects data on have... basically the same number of monthly page views from Google Search they have had for years? pressgazette.co.uk/media-audien...

"From the very beginning, our journalists who were there, and now the people who work for us, have had to focus on trying to keep their families and relatives alive and fed." Read interview with @afp.com Global News Director Phil Chetwynd here reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/starved...

Misinformation often comes from the top, including some established politicians, institutions, and sometimes media, exhibit no ∞ "'There's No Hunger in Gaza,' Say Netanyahu, the Israeli Army and Media. Meanwhile, Starvation Worsens" @haaretzcom.bsky.social reports www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

"“We condemn the targeted killings of these broadcast journalists who, despite facing insurmountable odds, continued to get the story out. Telling stories should not be a death sentence,” said David Walmsley,[EiC]of The Globe and Mail [and] World Editors Forum" President wan-ifra.org/2025/08/tell...

"Authoritarian governments [work to] embed mass surveillance, widespread suppression and government control over how technology develops." At the same time, @markscott.bsky.social writes, democracies are "divided [as] Washington pushes MAGA policymaking" www.techpolicy.press/washingtons-...

A great opportunity to work on a great project with great people.

What I wouldn't give to have access to data on use of this - "Google is rolling out a new feature called “Preferred Sources” ... which allows users to select their preferred choice of news sites and blogs to be shown in the Top Stories section [of] search results." techcrunch.com/2025/08/12/g...

"We need an accurate record on issues that are contested" @cward1e.bsky.social writes, but the reality is that "information sources are disappearing. This is preventing fact checkers, journalists, researchers and policymakers from doing their jobs." fullfact.org/technology/m...

"There are at least 142 measurement vendors for television and online content in the U.S." That's different measurements developed for different purposes with various pros/cons, based on different interests and funding models (often advertising-related). www.axios.com/2025/08/03/a...

We already have over 100 sign-ups but a few spots are still available for Day 1 of the Data Access Days on research access to platform data under the Digital Services Act (DSA) — happening on 25 September 2025. Join us in Berlin! 👉 dsa40collaboratory.eu/data-access-... #DSA40 #DigitalServicesAct

I go to read an academic paper on ScienceDirect, and before I can even see the abstract, there's this "offer" staring at me.

"To address the lack of diverse perspectives in public media, Dutch broadcasters NPO and Omroep Zwart[are piloting](AI-Assisted Virtual Audiences)...AI-generated personas representing underrepresented audience segments to inform editorial decisions" reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/its-fea...

"The executive branch cannot be both the arbiter of legality of media content, and the issuer of takedown notices" @subbuvincent.bsky.social says as @reuters.com documents scope of Indian government crackdown - including on inconvenient news, satire, cartoons, etc. www.reuters.com/business/med...

So many other institutions depend on the availability and integrity of independent statistics (including news media) so it is no surprise unscrupulous politicians are keen to control the numbers - AI reliance on such data will only increase desire to do so www.bbc.com/news/article...

"“When you are protecting the industries of the past, you are not dedicating your scarce resources to promoting the industries of tomorrow,” [Guersent] added, pointing to [the] tech industry in the US." "EU trustbuster warns against ‘big is beautiful’ merger push", FT reports on.ft.com/4mr0w82

"Neither Prof Przybylski nor Prof Etchells dispute the grave threat of certain online harms, such as grooming and exposure to explicit or harmful content. But both argue [the] current debate around screen time is in danger of driving it further underground" www.bbc.com/news/article...

"The Pfizergate saga ends, for now, with the sad truth that seemingly no one can compel von der Leyen to play by the rules of a democracy, in which laws have to be followed, and officials communications are subject to scrutiny, even when it troubles the powerful" @alexfanta.bsky.social writes. 🧵⬇️

"For the French civil servant, much of the rhetoric around European champions is a convenient distraction for national governments reluctant to reform"

That access to documents is a fundamental right in the EU, but deleting documents without independent oversight carries zero penalties, feels like a massive loophole. Time to fix this.

There is increasing interest in the possibility of using legislation to proactively shape what we see online. I wrote more here for @politiken.dk about the principled and practical questions - if you pick winners, you also create losers politiken.dk/kultur/medie...

Commission pushed ahead despite calls for a pause (including from some big European companies), got key EU tech companies and most of the large US ones to sign the voluntary Code, but judging from this statement they lost much of the creative industries along the way www.epceurope.eu/post/joint-s...

Many governments are talking AI and tech deregulation - but what about the public? New survey suggests citizens across the six countries covered "are not in favor of the recent push for deregulation and allowing AI innovation to progress unchecked". www.techpolicy.press/governments-...

Much of the public is concerned about what is real and fake when it comes to online news So what do people do if & when they want to check something important in the news that they suspect may be false, misleading, or fake? Wrote about it here reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news... 1/3

Joint statement on Gaza from AFP, AP, BBC News and Reuters

More zero-click searches, same revenue for Google, less visibility for publishers? Three things to read together on (1) how users respond to AI summaries, (2) what the company says it means for volume of queries and revenue, and (3) outside analysis on publishers’ visibility 1/4

Game on!