Making a Rioter: Network Contagion, Human Rights and Digital Citizens

Graduate Research Assistant Joseph Shiovitz at John Jay College provided this summary and analysis of the first event of the CIHR Transatlantic Forum on 10/26/21 organized by the Center for International Human Rights at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Department of Comparative Criminal Law, Criminal Procedural Law and Corporate Criminal Law at the Free University of Berlin.

The timely and inspired work being performed by the AI Team at the Center for International Human Rights was reinforced by the pressing issues discussed recently at the first session of the CIHR Transatlantic Forum. The topic of social media’s ability to incite violence was presented by Dr. Alex Heinze (University of Gottingen School of Law) and further discussed by Dr. Marie-Michelle Strah (John Jay College of Criminal Justice).

Recently Facebook has been in the headlines as a former-employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen brought forth allegations of wrongdoing. Facebook’s role in the political process has become a mainstream issue since the U.S. 2016 election when misinformation campaigns appeared to be widespread across the platform. However, while this event made headlines in the United States, Facebook has been involved in many more political issues around the globe, as the network connects 2 billion people worldwide — giving it a larger population than any country. In 2017, the United Nations issued a Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and “Fake News”, Disinformation and Propaganda, which discusses a growing prevalence of disinformation on social media and its impact on both freedom of expression as a fundamental human right, as well as the role of governments and corporations in ensuring that all political and civil rights are protected while countering hate speech and incitement to violence.

Dr. Heinze pointed out in his discussion that freedom of speech is the underlying value that protects the right to protest, which raises at least 2 immediate issues:

• Is the right to speech absolute, and if not, under what circumstances shall it be limited?
• To what extent is a person responsible for the violence they incite with their speech, regardless of whether they engage in the violence?

Social media has changed the power of a single voice to something stronger than shouting. Dr. Heinze argues that it’s imperative to revisit our views about speech regulations in light of the developments in internet communications since Brandenburg. Now, speech spreads faster than ever, is heard (or seen) by a wider audience much more easily, and the ‘man on the street corner’ motif is rendered obsolete by virtue of the fact a person no longer needs to be present in order for their speech to be heard and acted upon.

Internet dialogues have fostered extremism and radical echo chambers that have led to violence in the real world stemming from hate groups’ use of social media for recruitment and mobilization to violence. The issue of data surveillance quickly becomes an issue as well; while most people don’t want their personal conversations being monitored, they do want domestic and foreign terrorist organizations monitored to prevent planned attacks. What’s going to be the social media equivalent to everyone taking their shoes off at the airport now? As discussed in the question period, if the demographic of insurrectionists wasn’t middle-aged white men with jobs, would the Capitol Police have been more prepared for the attack?

Dr. Heinze actually compares the hierarchical structure of terrorist organizations to that of domestic hate groups. Is the person who organizes the attacks responsible for the act once it’s carried out? The relevancy of hierarchy pertains to control. As the organizer of the group, one holds powerful amounts of control over the actions of that group. Being present at the scene of an attack isn’t completely necessary for being responsible for that attack.

As pointed out by Dr. Strah: first, the protected stature of one right is not prioritized over another right and second, the government already imposes many speech regulations that protect citizens.

To the first point, Dr. Heinze points out that the right of a person to speak should not obfuscate the right of a potential victim from being protected. Although we must protect speech, we must also protect those who could be harmed by the outcomes of that speech. When duties to protect overlap, is the priority to protect a person’s right to incite violence or to protect another person from violence? Also, beyond the issue of violence, if the right to protest is protected by the right to free speech, does that interfere with the right to free and fair elections if the purpose of such protest is to disrupt elections, especially in the context of growing election-related violence around the world (Brazil, India, Uganda, Myanmar, United States)?

To the second point, Dr. Strah offered a short list of existing and common government limitations on freedom of expression in the public interest:

• Governments regulate corporate speech in false advertisements to protect consumers
• Governments regulate discriminatory speech in employment, educational, and other settings to protect civil rights and liberties
• Governments regulate speech in and around polling stations to protect the fairness and integrity of elections

Incitement to violence in the context of election violence and insurrection should be viewed in the context of high complexity networked insurgencies with heterogeneous groups and actors with different threat and risk assessment models needed — similar to those used in analyzing cybercriminal organizations and coordinated disinformation campaigns as well as online extremist groups.

Social media has changed the way people express themselves, and old regulations lack the nuance to address relevant issues as noted throughout the discussion between Dr. Heinze and Dr. Strah. However, social media corporations like Facebook currently control most, if not all, of their own governance policies when it comes to speech. Corporations are not held to the same standard of human rights accountability as governments. Among all the arguments presented one thing is clear: modes of accountability must be updated to fit emerging concepts of digital citizenship and actors (governments, corporations and non state armed groups) in the digital space.

For those who want to dig deeper, watch the video of the webinar and read Dr. Heinze’s revised paper. Also, checkout the other articles recently posted on the CIHR AI Team Blog, and find out more about upcoming events (including one on 11/10/21 on systemic corruption) at the Center for International Human Rights on Twitter.