Online public spaces are virtual places where people can share information, engage in debate and discourse, and participate in civic activities. In a lot of ways, they are similar to physical places where you can meet other people and form community. In other ways they are very different.
These spaces can play an important role in freedom of expression, access to information, participation in public debates, and much more. Platforms like social media and other kinds of digital communities create such kinds of public spaces. They provide an opportunity for people to speak and be heard, connect with others, and advocate for social change. By facilitating open dialogue, online public spaces can help create a more inclusive and democratic society.
Unfortunately, these spaces are also troubled by censorship, surveillance, and misinformation. They are not universally accessible. Many people are not free to express themselves online. Through this session we’ll consider how to develop and protect online public spaces.
Keywords
Outcomes
After this session you will be able to:
- Understand who creates and owns online public spaces.
- Explain how online public spaces can contribute to digital justice.
- Take steps to interact in these spaces and protect them.
Definitions
Barriers
Barriers are the obstacles or systemic problems that hinder access to digital technologies, information, or opportunities. These are often related to socioeconomic status, region, discriminatory practices, and political climate. For example, in the European Union, 94% of households have access to the internet. This stands in sharp contrast to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where nearly 72 million people lack internet access (nearly 81% of the population). (Source: The European Commission [the executive branch of the European Union] and the World Economic Forum, an international NGO and think tank, based in Switzerland.)
Social Media
Social media platforms are important online spaces where billions of people share news, keep connected with friends and groups, create and advocate. These platforms can form important public spaces online as they allow anyone with access to connect, share ideas and information, and advocate. However, these platforms are nearly all owned by Big Tech, with significant political and economic influences, and are subject to poor moderation, a flood of harmful content, and opaque algorithms that keep people in echo chambers where they only encounter ideas and people just like themselves.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Threads, and Facebook, has a Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) policy, used to limit hate speech and the endorsement of violence on its platforms. Sounds good, right? But looking more closely, we see that the DOI is based on the list of terrorist organizations defined by the United States government. This means Meta’s policy is in fact intertwined with American foreign policy and lacks transparency around criteria for inclusion. (Source: Human Rights Watch, an international NGO that carries out research and advocacy related to the protection of human rights around the world.)
Public Spaces
Public spaces can be physical, like parks and sidewalks, town squares, and markets. They are places for encounter and exchange. These are places that are open to everyone, where people can come to exercise their communication rights and participate in public discourse.
Online public spaces can be much the same. They are virtual places where ideas can be shared and debated and where people can encounter each other and learn new things. They can be chat groups, social media, or collaborative spaces like Wikipedia. However, online public spaces are subject to restrictions, especially by the technology companies who own them. There is movement to create online public spaces independent from corporate influence. (Source: Open Future, a Dutch research and policy centre.)
Ownership
When it comes to online public spaces, ownership is not just about who runs the platforms we use to share our ideas and connect with other people. Ownership also refers to the data, or content, that we create and the rights we have to protect it.
Most users of social media and similar platforms are unaware of how their data gets used. Often users agree to terms and conditions that allow their personal data to be used to train artificial intelligence, be repurposed elsewhere on the platform, or even contribute to profiling for politics and advertising. (Source: Copyrightlaws.com, a for-profit website specializing in educating people about copyright law in Canada and the United States.)
Open Access
Open access is the principle that people should have free and unrestricted access to information and knowledge for the benefit of society. It promotes innovation and broader sharing of resources; it also helps people to overcome barriers they face in publishing their ideas and knowledge. Open access promotes the democratization of research and helps bridge digital divides, especially between the global North and global South. Studies have shown that this publishing model increases the diversity of citations in research, meaning different ideas are reaching more people in more places.
Be careful not to confuse open access with open source, which means that a software developer gives other people the permission to distribute the source code of a program and let others build on it in a collaborative, public way. Also, do not assume that open means free. It’s almost always not! Funding is often behind the scenes, whether through governments or foundations or individuals, and it’s important to know where the money comes from and what strings are attached.
(Source: London School of Economics, a public research university in the United Kingdom.)
Onward
Well done. You now understand the basics about public space online and how hard it is to build and protect these spaces. We hope you’re now eager to go a bit deeper. Click the button below to learn from experts on fascinating topics like echo chambers and open access publishing.