The Digital Agora: Emerging Technologies, Freedom of Information and Democratic Space

Abstract

The digital revolution, fuelled by information technologies, has profoundly transformed the perception of reality and subjective interactions, with significant political, legal, social and economic implications. Current communication technologies hold a pervasive, often opaque, computational power that develops in virtual contexts in which the individual merges with the digital environment. In this scenario, the risk is that algorithmic solicitations, based on in-depth knowledge of individual habits, produce a form of hidden governance of choices, accentuating the information asymmetry between users and digital service providers. The contemporary world, defined by data correlations and algorithmic selections, thus takes on the characteristics of a ‘black-box society’, in which the distinction between the state and the market is blurred, new forms of surveillance emerge, and democratic principles and the rule of law are called into question. In the absence of defined spatial boundaries, regulatory divergences between the United States and Europe on the right to freedom of expression highlight the need to harmonize different legal and cultural visions. Therefore a global regulatory approach is proposed that can integrate human values into algorithms and promote digital education as a tool to increase civic awareness and collective responsibility in the information ecosystem.