IViR Lecture Series: Regulation for a More Democratic Internet: Lessons from Communications Regulation & Antitrust Law

IViR is pleased to announce that
Prof. Dwayne Winseck
will give a lecture entitled
Regulation for a More Democratic Internet:
Lessons from Communications Regulation & Antritrust Law

on Friday 3 February 2023

The purpose of this talk is to address the steady stream of public policy that has been taking shape in one country after another with respect to Internet regulation, including in the member countries of the European Union, Canada, the United States, Australia, China, etc. Much of this discussion is being driven and framed by analogies to media policy and broadcasting regulation. In this talk Prof. Winseck will argue that this framing is too constrained and its time frame too short. He will argue that we should look to the much longer history of communications regulation and antitrust law whose origins reach back into the late-19th Century, instead, when the modern capitalist administrative state was being forged on both sides of the Atlantic and then internationally. This view offers a more powerful policy framework and regulatory toolbox. It also addresses concerns with markets, politics, power, and the normative principles that underpin the relationship between communication, capitalism and democracy in a manner that is arguably superior to broadcasting regulation & media policy.

Dwayne R. Winseck is a Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, with a cross-appointment to the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His research interests and writing focus on the political economy of communications, the Internet and media as well as communications and media history, theory, policy and regulation. Dwayne is also the Director of the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project. The GMIC Project is funded and supported by the Social and Sciences Research Council of Canada and examines the structure and evolution of two-dozen sectors of the communication, Internet and media industries in close to forty countries and over the years from 1984 to 2027. 

Date: 3 February 2023
Time: 16.00 – 17.30 CET (Amsterdam)
Place:
– IViR Room, 5.24, REC A, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam.
– Online via Zoom (you will receive the Zoomlink via e-mail on the morning of the lecture).

See also the flyer.