Regulating (Abuse on) Social Media: A New Approach?

Rachel’s field of interest is in critical transparency studies and human rights. Her Ph.D., entitled ‘The Creation of “A World After its own Image”: A Genealogy of Transparency’ set out a new theory of transparency as a regime of truth and explored its effects within the African region.

Rachel’s background is in human rights, having led the civil and political rights research portfolio at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) from 2014-2016. Her work included preparing the SAHRC’s National Human Rights Institution reports to the United Nations Human Rights Committee on the implementation of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. She subsequently moved to the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa, as a Chief Researcher within the Research Use and Impact Assessment Unit.

Rachel has maintained a particular focus on the right of access to information, having held the position of Compliance Officer for the Promotion of Access to Information Act at the SAHRC. As part of her work on access to information, Rachel has worked on freedom of information projects across various jurisdictions, both within the African, American and European regions, for organisations including the Open Government Partnership, Open Society Foundation and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights of the African Union.

Rachel is currently an editor for the South African Journal on Human Rights.

Dr Tambini is an expert in media and communications regulation and policy, and active in policymaking as well as academic research. He is frequently called to give evidence to parliamentary committees and provide formal and informal policy advice to government and international organisations. From 2014-2015 he served on the UK Government Expert Panel advising on the value of electromagnetic spectrum. He was called to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012, and from 2009-2010 he served on the Communications Consumer Panel, a non-executive role at the communications regulator Ofcom. He has advised the European Commission and served on several expert groups for the Council of Europe.

Dr Tambini was inaugural Director of the LSE Media Policy Project between 2010 and 2018. From June 2002-August 2006 Dr Tambini was Head of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at Oxford University. Before that he was director of the IPPR Media Policy Project (1999-2002), Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford (1998). Lecturer, Humboldt University, Berlin (1997-8), and researcher at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy (PhD 1996).

Dr Tambini’s research interests include media and telecommunications policy and democratic communication. He is the author of many articles on media and communications regulation and policy and author/ editor of several books. His most recent book is ‘Media Freedom’ published by Polity Press in 2021. He co-edited ‘Regulating Big Tech. Policy Responses to Digital Dominance’ (Oxford University Press 2021) and ‘Digital Dominance: The Power of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.’ (Oxford University Press 2018). He co-wrote ‘Codifying Cyberspace’ (Routledge, 2008), co-edited ‘Cyberdemocracy’ (Routledge 1998) and ‘Citizenship, Markets, and the State’ (Oxford University Press 2000). Other publications include: ‘Nationalism in Italian Politics’ (Routledge 2001), ‘Collective Identities in Action: Theories of Ethnic Conflict’ (Ashgate, September 2002); ‘New News: Impartial Broadcasting in the Digital Age’ (edited by D. Tambini and J. Cowling, IPPR 2002) and ‘Privacy and the Media’ (IPPR, December 2003).

Since joining Open Rights Group in January 2009, Jim Killock has led campaigns against three strikes and the Digital Economy Act, the company Phorm and its plans to snoop on UK users, and against pervasive government Internet surveillance. He is working on data protection and privacy issues, as well as helping ORG to grow in size and breadth. Mr Killock was named as one of the 50 most influential people on IP issues by Managing IP in 2012. In the same year ORG won Liberty’s Human Rights Campaigner of the Year award alongside 38 Degrees, for work on issues from copyright to the Snooper’s Charter.

Since 2009, ORG has doubled its supporter base, budget and workload, and held five activist conferences, ORGCon.

Mr Killock is a trustee of FreeUKGen, the volunteer project to digitise genealogical records, and sits on the Governance Board of CREATe, the UK’s research centre for copyright and new business models in the creative economy. He is on the Advisory Council of the Foundation of Information Policy Research.

Before joining ORG, Mr Killock worked as External Communications Co-ordinator of the Green Party. At the Green Party, he promoted campaigns on open source, intellectual property, digital rights and campaigned against the arms and espionage technologist Lockheed Martin’s bid for the UK Census. Lockheed Martin have since been prevented from handling UK Census data as part of their contract. He was also a leading figure in the campaign to elect their first party leader, Caroline Lucas MP. He has a blog at http://jim.killock.org.uk/.

Lorna Woods is a professor of internet law at the University of Essex and a member of the Human Rights Centre there. She started her career in practice at a commercial solicitors’ firm advising in the field of commercial law, specifically that relating to the ICT sector. She then moved to academia where she has taught and researched in media and telecommunications regulation at both national and EU level, publishing widely in these fields. Notably, she co-authored a book, European Broadcasting Law and Policy (Cambridge University Press) with Prof J Harrison, and has been country expert for the UK in respect of a number of Commission funded projects.

Stephen Collins is Director of Public Policy EMEA at Snap Inc. He has previously worked in a variety of policy and regulatory roles at Veon, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo! Still earlier, Dr Collins enjoyed spells in government, academia and the not-for-profit sector.

William Perrin is a Trustee of Carnegie UK Trust where, with Professor Lorna Woods he has led work on the regulation of online harms since 2018. The Woods/Perrin model of risk management of internet company systems through a statutory duty of care seemed to form the basis of the UK Government internet safety proposals and may have inspired some of the Digital Services Act approach to due diligence and risk management. Almost all of Mr Perrin’s 15 year civil service career involved regulation, some of which was successful, some not. Mr Perrin was first asked to look at internet regulation in 1994, then worked on the BSkyB/cable industry dispute in the 1990s at DTI, was Private Secretary to the Energy Minister in 1997-98, managed the 2001 Communications White Paper which created OFCOM, was a policy advisor to the Prime Minister from 2001-2004 covering communications regulation, modernising regulation of pubs bars and clubs and regulation of gambling. Mr Perrin ran a social tech media business for Channel4 for ten years after leaving the civil service and was asked by the Secretary of State to advise on the future of local tv news. He is now a trustee at a range of charities with digital activities.