Digital rights of an interconnected society
The digital evolution established an unprecedented interdependence between individuals and entities. This has also given rise to subtle, yet pervasive human rights violations that often go unnoticed due to their minor individual impact. On a massive scale, these infringements significantly change the environment that determines the degree of our freedom. Because of the mutual interconnectedness of online users, the cumulative effect of these harms grows not merely at a linear, but at an exponential scale, for example the effect of disinformation multiplies with the transitions between individuals cross cultural and geographical boundaries, just like viruses spread across the globe.
The legal challenge relating to these harms is that currently, they do not reach the threshold of legal reaction, because they are dispersed between a large number of private actors. My research aims to explore these and to redefine human rights in the context of the digital society.
Main Research Topics
- Human rights
- Artificial Intelligence
- regulatory policy
- horizontal effect
- society
Research Results
These six month presented me with the opportunity to elaborate and discuss my proposed concepts of microscopical violations of rights with likeminded colleagues with an international background. This happened partly in the form of a hybrid workshop, through interviews, and online correspondence. Additionally, I have organised an international consortium to design a future research project. These collaborations and discussions allowed me to refine my concept and assess its future applicability. I also found future co-authors and collaborators. The commonly acceptable agreed elements of my theory were, that societal harms are not adequately considered because current regulation takes account of individual human rights violations only, even though in the context of digitalised informational rights individual harm hardly ever exists. Due to the myriads of connections between billions of persons, and the accelerated speed of processing results and even microscopic human rights infringement accumulates and generates larger societal harms.
- Bayer, J. (2024) Post-truth and post-trust: how to re-define trust in the judicial system and the media ERA Forum 25, pp. 165–179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12027-024-00795-8
- Bayer, J. (2024) Digital Media Regulation within the European Union – A Framework for a New Media Order, Nomos, https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783748945352/digital-media-regulation-within-the-european-union?page=1
Curriculum Vitae
- 09/2016 – current: Budapest Business University of Applied Sciences Co-teaching the course AI, Human Rights and Ethics. An interdisciplinary and inter-institutional, innovative research course.
- 08/2020 – current: Research Fellow and Guest Researcher at the University of Münster, Institute for Information, Telecommunication and Media Law. “Platform Regulation and Human Rights”
Publications and Presentations
- Bayer, J. (2024?) The Place of Content Ranking Algorithms on the Ai Risk Spectrum, Telecommunication Policy (In the Peer Review Process, pre-publication at SSRN) http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4586515
- Bayer, J. – Grimme, Chr. – Meuwly, D. – Trautmann, H.: AI Trustworthiness in the Judicial Process – Challenges, Risks and Opportunities, Social Media and Society (Submitted)
- Bayer, J (2022) AI and disinformation. The technological and legal limits of content regulation in the
- context of disinformation. Legal Tech. 1(2) p. 81.-87.
- Bayer, J. – Grimme, Chr. (2024 forthcoming) From Code to Conscience: Exploring Human Rights and Ethics in Multidisciplinary AI Education.
- Springer. 1-196. (Accepted for publication)
- Bayer, J. – Holznagel, B. – Korpisaari, P. – Woods, L. (2021) (eds) Perspectives on Platform Regulation. Concepts and Models of Social Media Governance Across the Globe. Nomos