)

How can democracies thrive in an age dominated by data and Big Tech? In this conversation, Professor Robin Mansell discusses a new book and reflects on the global imbalances shaping today’s information ecosystems – and on how they might be transformed towards fairer, more democratic digital futures.

The conversation builds on the new book Information Ecosystems and Troubled Democracy: The State of Knowledge on News Media, AI, and Data Governance, published by Nordicom, which examines how technological, political, and social forces intersect to influence democracy across different regions of the world.

Robin Mansell is professor emeritus at the London School of Economics and Political Science and one of the authors of the book.

**From Report to Book **

“This all started around two and a half years ago”, Robin Mansell explains. “The International Observatory for Information and Democracy, based in Paris, decided to launch a big project, which would look at the role of information ecosystems broadly in contributing to the fragility of democracy”.

The initiative brought together more than 300 contributors to map research on the news media, AI systems, and data governance in the Global North and the Global Majority World. “In the end, it produced a big report with more than 1,600 citations”, Mansell says, “which addressed the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in existing research”.

The idea to update and revise that report for a book came later. “We were encouraged to make our work more widely available, especially to students and people new to this field”, Mansell recalls. “And that’s why we came to Nordicom, who happily agreed to publish our book”.

**Challenging the Power of Big Tech **

Around the world, governments are introducing new regulations to curb Big Tech’s influence. “Huge efforts are being made in a top-down way to encourage the Big Tech companies to respect human rights including freedom of expression, and privacy”, Mansell says. “But these approaches usually leave the Big Tech fundamental business models intact. Their exploitative data practices are more or less left as they are, with some limitations”.

Instead, Mansell points to small-scale, bottom-up initiatives: “We came across a variety of resistance strategies, from cities and municipalities to Indigenous research groups and technology designers, who are putting into practice different kinds of platforms and AI-enabled services that give users greater control over how their data is collected and used”.

But such efforts face very different conditions around the world. “In the Global Majority World, there are often resource and institutional constraints, and the dominance of Big Tech companies makes local alternatives more difficult to develop”, she explains. “The Nordic countries, like the European Union as a whole, often try to balance human rights with innovation – the aim is to ensure that these services operate in the interest of all. But the Nordic countries have far more resources to experiment with alternative models”.

**Why Context Matters **

Mansell underlines that understanding context is key to building fair and accountable information ecosystems. “It is absolutely essential when we think about the implications of information ecosystems and the way they’re developing for democracy to respect the fact that there is no universal or global template that can be imposed across the world”, she says.

“What we need to be concerned with”, she continues, “is the context in which these developments are happening – the social, the political, the economic environment, and the pre-existing conditions of inequality and injustice. This is because what happens in specific contexts is that those characteristics become embedded in the new online environments being created”.

“Achieving data justice and respect for human rights”, she continues, “requires democratic dialogue, independent assessment, and governance that protects media freedom, ensures transparency in AI systems, and treats data responsibly – always with the real interests of people at the centre”.

**Towards More Coherent Policymaking **

Understanding context, Mansell suggests, also means recognising how fragmented policy responses can undermine broader efforts toward data justice. “One of the most urgent things that policymakers can do is to invest in and be curious about alternative strategies to the main Big Tech developments”, she notes. “They need to stop imagining that tech innovation is going to solve social and political problems. It won’t. Quite often it deepens and replicates them because values become embedded in the technology”.

To move forward, Mansell says, governments must connect their efforts. “On the side of competition policy, on the side of data protection, on the side of dealing with the news media – all of these governance initiatives tend to happen in silos. We need horizontal insight into what the expected outcomes are – and to ensure that independent decisions can be taken in the public interest”.

Rethinking Whose Knowledge Counts

“One of the most disturbing outcomes of our assessment”, Mansell reflects, “was how biased research on information ecosystems is towards the Global North”.

In order to address these inequalities, she calls for funding bodies to rethink their priorities: “We need to challenge research organisations and funders not only to fund research outside the Global North, but to expect that researchers who undertake research in the Global North on the Global Majority World understand just how far their results can be generalised – to understand how their own biases and positionality are influencing how they understand what’s going on elsewhere in the world”.

And while the gaps remain, Mansell is optimistic about the future: “There are signs that it alternatives to the Big Tech technology designs and business models are coming. I think that is the inspiring feature of the project, that it’s not all gloom and doom. There are spaces of opportunity where people are undertaking research action which sheds real light on possibilities to imagine a better digital future that is more supportive of democracy”.

Information Ecosystems and Troubled Democracy: The State of Knowledge on News Media, AI, and Data Governance

Written by: Robin Mansell, Flavia Durach, Matthias Kettemann, Théophile Lenoir, Rob Procter, Gyan Prakash Tripathi, Emily Tucker

Read the book Open Access arrow_forward

*Photo: Adobe Stock *