Three decades after Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server, the technologies that once promised to usher in a new era of democracy are now also being used to spread disinformation and sow distrust. Amid a global pandemic and the contentious political events surrounding the 2020 U.S. election, the potential for harm has grown...

In 2021, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) organised a working group of its Global Platform Governance Network to focus on the issues of transparency and accountability of digital platforms, especially social media networks. This report attempts to synthesise and summarise the discussions at these meetings.

This research debunks speculation that a major state-backed campaign was deployed to influence political discourse in Australia on social media. The research analysed more than 69,000 tweets, from two low-points in Australia-China relations in 2020, and found no evidence the CCP was using bots to shape political conversation on the social media site.

Many women face online abuse simply because they have an active online presence as part of their working life. This research highlights women’s lived experiences of online abuse, and points to the need for greater action by online platforms and employers to prevent and respond to abuse.

Disinformation has fundamentally altered the functioning of our public square and our democracy. Increasingly, fair and factual debate is a rarity. The experiment outlined in this report sought to test Facebook’s ad review system by attempting to approve advertisements that explicitly promoted election disinformation narratives that were common in the last US election.