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This chapter is about online hate speech propagated via platforms operated by social media companies (SMCs). It examines the options open to states in forcing SMCs to take responsibility for the hateful content that appears on their sites. It examines the technological and legal context for imposing legal obligations on SMCs, and analyses initiatives in Germany, the United Kingdom, the European Union and elsewhere. It argues that while SMCs can play a role in controlling online hate speech, there are limitations to what they can achieve.

The debate about tackling online misinformation and disinformation is not unique to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the health crisis has elevated the danger of misleading information circulated on social media. Labelled as ‘infodemic’, the problem of COVID-19-related misinformation and disinformation prompted governments and social media platforms around the globe to impose various speech restrictions. The public and private policy frameworks aiming to curb the spread of the infodemic were adopted in a state of emergency and without proper scrutiny. Yet, they are shaping the future of content regulation, possibly affecting freedom of speech and other democratic values for years to come. This chapter looks at the key problematic aspects of actions taken by governments and social media platforms to address COVID-19-related misinformation and disinformation and discusses the possible long-term effects of these measures.

To respond to the COVID-19 “infodemic” and combat fraud and misinformation about the virus, social media platforms coordinated with government healthcare agencies around the world to elevate authoritative content about the novel coronavirus. These public health authorities included national and global public health organisations, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). In this article, the authors evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy by asking two key questions: (1) Did people engage with authoritative health content on social media? (2) Was this content trusted?

The authors explore these issues by drawing on data from a global online questionnaire on “Public Trust in Experts” (n = 429) conducted during the initial phase of the pandemic in May 2020, a crucial period when reliable information was urgently required to influence behaviour and minimise harm.

The authors found that while the majority of those surveyed noticed authoritative health content online, there remained significant issues in terms of Internet users trusting the information shared by government healthcare agencies and public health authorities online.

In what follows, the authors examine the role of trust in implementing this novel public health strategy and assess the capacity for such policies to reduce individual and social harm.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2021-0655

Analyse the presence of hate speech in society, placing special emphasis on social media. In this sense, the authors strive to build a formula to moderate this type of content, in which platforms and public institutions cooperate, from the fields of corporate social responsibility and public diplomacy, respectively.

To this aim, it is important to focus efforts on the creation of counter-narratives; the establishment of content moderation guidelines, which are not necessarily imposed by unilateral legislation; the promotion of suitable scenarios for the involvement of civil society; transparency on the part of social media companies; and supranational cooperation that is as transnational as possible. To exemplify the implementation of initiatives against hate speech, two cases are analysed that are paradigmatic for assuming two effective approaches to the formula indicated by the authors.

The authors analyse, in the case of the European Union, its “Code of conduct to counteract illegal online hate speech”, which included the involvement of different social media companies. And in the case of Canada, the authors discuss the implementation of the bill to include a definition of hate speech and the establishment of specific sanctions for this in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Canadian Penal Code.

The case of the European Union was a way of seeking consensus with social media companies without legislation, while the case of Canada involved greater legislative and penalisation. Two ways of seeking the same goal: curbing hate speech.

In an era where complex technological advances increasingly govern service delivery, it is incumbent on service firms to pioneer innovative strategies to sustain customer engagement and cultivate loyalty. This conceptual paper examines the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of online customer communities, with a particular focus on its creation, management and enhancement facets. The authors explore how AI can revolutionize the dynamics of customer interaction, feedback mechanisms and overall engagement within the service industry.

This conceptual paper draws from marketing and management literature focusing on customer communities and AI in service and customer engagement contexts with a robust future research agenda.

A classification of online customer community engagement is provided along with a conceptual framework to guide our understanding of the integration of AI into online customer communities.

This exploration underscores the imperative for service firms to embrace AI-driven approaches to online customer community management, not only as a means to optimize their operations but as a vital strategy to stay competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. This paper examines the novel combination of AI with online customer communities and provides the framework in the form of an input-process-output (IPO) model for future research into this integration.

Social media platforms are a pervasive technology that continues to define the modern world. While social media has brought many benefits to society in terms of connection and content sharing, numerous concerns remain for the governance of social media platforms going forward, including (but not limited to) the spread of misinformation, hate speech and online surveillance. However, the voice of citizens and other non-experts is often missing from such conversations in information systems literature, which has led to an alleged gap between research and the everyday life of citizens.

The authors address this gap by presenting findings from 16 h of online dialog with 25 citizens on social media platform governance. The online dialog was undertaken as part of a worldwide consultation project called “We, the internet”, which sought to provide citizens with a voice on a range of topics such as “Digitalization and Me,” “My Data, Your Data, Our Data” and “A Strong Digital Public Sphere.” Five phases of thematic analysis were undertaken by the authors to code the corpus of qualitative data.

Drawing on the Theory of Communicative Action, the authors discuss three dialogical processes critical to citizen discourse: lifeworld reasoning, rationalization and moral action. The findings point toward citizens’ perspectives of current and future issues associated with social media platform governance, including concerns around the multiplicity of digital identities, consent for vulnerable groups and transparency in content moderation. The findings also reveal citizens’ rationalization of the dilemmas faced in addressing these issues going forward, including tensions such as digital accountability vs data privacy, protection vs inclusion and algorithmic censorship vs free speech.

Based on outcomes from this dialogical process, moral actions in the form of policy recommendations are proposed by citizens and for citizens. The authors find that tackling these dark sides of digitalization is something too important to be left to “Big Tech” and equally requires an understanding of citizens’ perspectives to ensure an informed and positive imprint for change.