This chapter reviews the regulation of disinformation from an African human rights’ law perspective, focusing on the right to freedom of expression and the right to vote. It provides an overview of the African regional law framework, specifically the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights of 1981 (the African Charter) and corresponding jurisprudence. The chapter also analyses the way in which freedom of expression and disinformation laws have been applied in African countries, the aim being to contextualize and illustrate how African regional law plays out at the domestic level, but with an emphasis on the position in South Africa.

A broad consensus has emerged in recent years that although rumours, conspiracy theories and fabricated information are far from new, in the changed structure and operating mechanisms of the public sphere today we are faced with something much more challenging than anything to date, and the massive scale of this disinformation can even pose a threat to the foundations of democracy. However, the consensus extends only to this statement, and opinions differ considerably about the causes of the increased threat of disinformation, whom to blame for it, and the most effective means to counter it. From the perspective of freedom of speech, the picture is not uniform either, and there has been much debate about the most appropriate remedies. It is commonly argued, for example, that the free speech doctrine of the United States does not allow for effective legal action against disinformation, while in Europe there is much more room for manoeuvre at the disposal of the legislator.

The structure of society is heavily dependent upon its means of producing and distributing information. As its methods of communication change, so does a society. In Europe, for example, the invention of the printing press created what we now call the public sphere. The public sphere, in turn, facilitated the appearance of ‘public opinion’, which made possible wholly new forms of politics and governance, including the democracies we treasure today.

The issue of mass disinformation on the Internet is a long-standing concern for policymakers, legislators, academics and the wider public. Disinformation is believed to have had a significant impact on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Concern about the threat of foreign – mainly Russian – interference in the democratic process is also growing. The COVID-19 pandemic, which reached global proportions in 2020, gave new impetus to the spread of disinformation, which even put lives at risk. The problem is real and serious enough to force all parties concerned to reassess the previous European understanding of the proper regulation of freedom of expression.

The ‘marketplace of ideas’ metaphor tends to dominate US discourse about the First Amendment and free speech more generally. The metaphor is often deployed to argue that the remedy for harmful speech ought to be counterspeech, not censorship; listeners are to be trusted to sort the wheat from the chaff. This deep skepticism about the regulation of even harmful speech in the USA raises several follow-on questions, including: How will trustworthy sources of information fare in the marketplace of ideas? And how will participants know whom to trust? Both questions implicate non-regulatory, civil-society responses to mis- and disinformation.

The Concluding Reflections explore democracy’s potential to overcome its contradictions and challenges. The rise of populism, seen as democratic autoimmunity, is examined, where leaders manipulate public sentiment, often through xenophobia and anti-elitism, undermining democratic principles. The tyranny of an exclusory majority is also cautioned against. The potential for democracy’s reimagining in the face of contemporary challenges such as cybernetic culture, migration, and globalization is considered. Ezrahi reflects on the role of creative individuals and cultural forces in shaping political imaginaries. The transformation of the internet and major platforms like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter from democratizing communication to powerful monopolies is analyzed, as well as the misuse of Big Data, illustrated by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the unintended consequences of digital platforms, including the spread of misinformation. The discussion concludes with a reflection on the broader deterioration of democratic epistemology. Ezrahi argues for a shift from a positivistic, naturalistic ontology to an ethical-normative anchorage, proposing to replace the current ontological defense of democracy with a commitment to preserving freedom based on novel axioms, framing politics as alternative productive fictions. Ezrahi proposes to reimagine a democratic epistemology which is anchored in ethics and collective commitment.

The internet is a global communication tool that is used to create and share vast amounts of information. The internet and all its associated technology are so ubiquitous that we cannot imagine a world without it. Such a force driving social change has not been seen since the invention of the printing press and the advent of global literacy.

Digital connectivity has become integral to our personal and professional lives. It has evolved into a fundamental necessity, shaping how we communicate, collaborate and engage in various aspects of our personal and work environments. It is continually evolving rapidly; our current machines, platforms, programs and applications will soon be superseded. As a business professional, you must keep learning new skills, adapt and constantly move forward to stay abreast of technological change.

This chapter explores online and digital spaces for organisational communication and outlines strategies business professional should consider when engaging with online audiences. It offers best-practice advice for creating and managing personal branding for a digital environment.

From 2018 to 2022, the ResisTIC (Criticism and circumvention of digital borders in Russia) project team has endeavored to analyze how different actors of the Russian Internet (RuNet) resist and adapt to the recent wave of authoritarian and centralizing regulations by the Russian state, with a particular focus on online resistance that reveals so far lesser-known social practices and techniques for circumventing online constraints. The chapter undertakes an infrastructure-based sociology of the RuNet, focusing on the technical devices and assets involved in surveillance and censorship, and on the strategies of resistance and circumvention “by infrastructure” that follow. The empirical core of the chapter will provide an overview of a number of studies undertaken by the ResisTIC project team in the past few years. While the presentation of the case studies will by necessity be relatively brief, presenting them together will allow to draw some general conclusions about the state of infrastructure-based digital sovereignization in Russia.

A capitalist market has been part of modern Russian literature since at least the early nineteenth century. Even during the Soviet era, the market was never entirely abolished. But when socialism fell in 1991, capitalism rushed in. This chapter focuses on the economic, social, and aesthetic consequences of the market in post-Soviet Russian literature. The book market boomed just as thick journals and legacy critics lost cultural authority, and as readers, publishers, and writers were pulled towards bestselling imports, largely western pulp. Drawn by success and fascinated by new forms, many authors innovated genre conventions, authorial performance, and audience interaction, using misdirection, mystification, and online and social media, among other strategies. Others mobilised the terms of capitalism to mount a critique of the illusory values of the new market society.