How to Regulate the Internet

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Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions

Disinformation, online abuse, privacy breaches, uneven internet infrastructure. How to address these problems confronting Canadians online?

Internet Archive Canada

How to Regulate the InternetThe Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) at UBC and the Centre for Media, Democracy, and Technology at McGill invite you to a public event at the Internet Archive Canada on the state of social media and platforms in Canada.Disinformation, online abuse, privacy breaches, and uneven internet infrastructure. These are just a few of the problems confronting Canadians online. It can be hard to imagine solutions but this panel will attempt to do just that! The event is a part of a broader project to hold online platforms accountable for their systems and to build public awareness of this policy agenda in Canada. Moderated by Heidi Tworek (UBC), the panel will feature four leading scholars on digital policy in Canada: Vass Bednar (McMaster), Emily Laidlaw (Calgary), Blayne Haggart (Brock), and Christelle Tessono (Princeton). They will assess the current state of digital policy in Canada and suggest productive ways forward. In what promises to be a wide-ranging and stimulating conversation, they will discuss content moderation, data and privacy, competition policy, and internet infrastructure. This 75-minute discussion will be followed by a drinks reception hosted at and by the Internet Archive. We kindly request that guests wear a mask if possible to protect vulnerable audience members.Moderator: Heidi Tworek is a Canada Research Chair and associate professor of international history and public policy at UBC. Her work examines history and policy around communications, particularly the effects of new media technologies on democracy. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. She co-edits the Journal of Global History.Panelists: Vass Bednar is the Executive Director of McMaster University’s MPP in Digital Society and an Adjunct Professor of Political Science. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Fellow at the Public Policy Forum, and a former Action Canada Fellow. Much of her recent research and advocacy has focussed on the modernization of competition law in Canada. Vass also writes the newsletter “regs to riches,” where she explores the relationship(s) between rules and prosperity.Blayne Haggart is an associate professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario, and an Associate Senior Fellow with the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. He is the author of Copyfight: The Global Politics of Digital Copyright Reform (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and co-editor of two volumes on the political economy of internet governance and knowledge governance, in addition to several journal articles on these subjects. His upcoming book, Data, Knowledge, Power and the Reshaping of the Global Economy, co-authored with Natasha Tusikov, will be published by Rowman &amp; Littlefield later this year. In his pre-academic life, he worked as a reporter and as an economist with the Canadian Parliamentary Information and Research Service.Emily Laidlaw is a Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law and Associate Professor. She researches in the areas of technology regulation, cybersecurity and human rights, with a focus on platform regulation, online harms, privacy, freedom of expression and corporate social responsibility. She is author of the book Regulating Speech in Cyberspace: Gatekeepers, Human Rights and Corporate Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2015). She co-chaired the Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety for the Heritage Ministry in summer 2022.Christelle Tessono is a tech policy researcher based at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). She's originally from Montreal and is interested in tackling the relationship between racial inequality and digital technology from a policy lens. As a result, this has led her to work on projects related to political advertising on social media platforms, gig work, facial recognition technology, and AI regulation.This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada.Ce projet a été rendu possible en partie grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

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