The Digital Berlin Wall – How Germany (Accidentally) Created a Prototype for Global Online Censorship – Act two

The Digital Berlin Wall – How Germany (Accidentally) Created a Prototype for Global Online Censorship – Act two   The German Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) continues to inspire authoritarian and illiberal internet censorship around the world. In under a year, the number of countries copy-pasting the NetzDG matrix to provide cover and legitimacy for digital […]

Paper: Does Freedom of Expression Cause Less Terrorism? (Accepted, Political Studies, 2020.)

It is often assumed that there is a trade-off between civil rights and national safety although the association is theoretically ambiguous. This paper therefore explores this association by estimating the effect of degrees of freedom of expression on the risk of terrorist attacks. We first note that different theoretical arguments support both a positive and […]

Analysis: The Digital Berlin Wall: How Germany (Accidentally) Created a Prototype for Global Online Censorship

Global Internet freedom is in decline. Authoritarian states manipulate the Internet to serve their own illiberal ends. But liberal democracies have also limited Internet freedom to counter contemporary scourges such as fake news, hate speech, and terrorist content. Germany´s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) is the most prominent weapon in the online arsenal of democracies. NetzDG obliges […]