This workshop will critically examine three new multi-stakeholder experiments in content governance. It will compare, contrast and evaluate 1) the Christchurch Call and its Advisory Network, 2) the Facebook Oversight Board, and 3) the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. All three use new governance models to develop policies and practices to guide the suppression of social media content deemed harmful or objectionable. These initiatives raise important questions about the relationship between private commercial platforms, governments, law, human rights, and the role of public input in resolving the ongoing tension between freedom of expression and controversial social media content. The workshop will bring together academic experts on multistakeholder Internet governance models with representatives of the platforms, government policy makers and leading civil society people involved in the initiatives. The panel will engage in a systematic assessment of how things are working, what seems to be going right, and what may be going wrong. The assessment will focus primarily on the organizational arrangements and the representational and consultation mechanisms (i.e. how they include different stakeholders and how their arrangements change or reinforce power relations among them), but will also consider the substantive policies being produced by the initiatives and their effectiveness.

Confirmed speakers:

Farzaneh Badii, Digital Medusa
Dia Kayyali, Associate Director for Advocacy at Mnemonic
Courtney Radsch, Author and Journalist
Ellen Strickland, Internet NZ
Erin Saltman, GIFCT