Regulating Social Media and the Future of Public Health

Organised by the UCL Department of Political Science and the UCL Global Governance Institute

In recent years, the detrimental health effects of social media have been undeniably exposed, particularly in the case of young people. Algorithms employed by social media platforms to keep people engaged with their devices raise questions of whether such algorithms foster addiction. Moreover, an abundance of evidence has demonstrated that the online consumption patterns can lead to suicidal thoughts and other mental health problems. 

Regulators around the world have taken a variety of approaches towards dealing with these problems. Legislation, lawsuits, and reputation-based “naming and shaming” tactics, have all been utilised to combat the public health effects of social media. In this event, we explore these different approaches and attempt to discern what impact they have had thus far, both separately and jointly, for the important question of how to regulate social media for public health.

Speakers

Ricki-Lee Gerbrandt is an international lawyer, legal scholar and is currently a Fellow in Law and Platform Governance at UCL’s Digital Speech Lab. Her scholarly work concerns platform governance, the regulation of social media, and media freedom. An experienced barrister, she has represented organisations in a number of high-profile cases that lie at the intersection of free speech and media regulation. She has advised government departments, corporations and individuals concerning access to information and freedom of expression matters. She is also a member of the Journalist Safety Research Network at the Centre for Freedom of the Media. 
 

Jeff Modisett is a Fulbright Fellow and Honorary Professor of Practice at UCL. He is also a lecturer at UCLA Law School, where his teaching focuses on the activities of state attorneys general. Professor Modisett has served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S.; as District Attorney of Marion County, Indiana, where he prosecuted the boxer Mike Tyson for sexual assault; and as Indiana Attorney General, where he helped negotiate the $206 billion tobacco settlement of the mid-1990s. He has also worked extensively in the private sector, in both law and technology.
 

Judith van Erp is Professor of Regulatory Governance at the University of Utrecht. Her research addresses regulatory enforcement and corporate crime, with a strong interest in the role of media and “naming and shaming” in governing corporate crime. Judith has published widely on regulatory governance and public administration and has conducted research for and advised a number of different government agencies in The Netherlands. Since 2018, she has been a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. 
 

Chaired by Colin Provost, UCL Department of Political Science

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