Policy Brief
The authors highlight why we believe the problem of “plural publics” to be a core challenge of data governance, discuss existing tools that can help achieve it and a research agenda to further develop and integrate these tools.
Data governance is usually conceptualized in terms of “privacy” v. “publicity”. Yet a core feature of pluralistic societies is association, groups that share with each other, privately. These are a diversity of “publics”, each externally private but with the ability to coordinate and share internally. Empowering them requires tools that allow the establishment of shared communicative contexts and their defense against external sharing outside of context. The ease of spreading information online has challenged such “contextual integrity” and the rise of generative foundation models like GPT-4 may radically exacerbate this challenge. In the face of this challenge, we highlight why we believe the problem of “plural publics” to be a core challenge of data governance, discuss existing tools that can help achieve it and a research agenda to further develop and integrate these tools.
Additional Resource
The bipartisan Utah Digital Choice Act aims to reform the social media ecosystem by giving users more choice and ownership over their personal data, while encouraging platform innovation and competition.
Policy Brief
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network submitted a public comment on the Development of a 2025 National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan.
Policy Brief
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network submitted a comment to Representative Trahan’s Request for Information to modernize the Privacy Act of 1974.
Policy Brief
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network submitted a public comment on the Development of a 2025 National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan.
Feature
What kind of democracy do legislators want? This question was at the center of a recent discussion with Melody Crowder-Meyer, associate professor of political science at Davidson College, as part of the American Politics Speaker Series.
Policy Brief
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network submitted a comment to Representative Trahan’s Request for Information to modernize the Privacy Act of 1974.
