The interactor commodity: the politics of social media advertising and following the money in multi-stakeholder internet governance
Associate Professor Jeremy Shtern (Ryerson) presents and reflects on results of a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded study of the relationships between internet users, social media firms and the advertising industry. He will discuss the internet governance implications linked to the emergence of data-driven social media advertising, and make the case for internet governance discussions to start paying more attention to the fact that advertising — historically a crucial policy agenda for governing electronic communication — is fundamentally shaping user experiences online and sponsoring the architecture of most public internet communication. Professor Shtern argues that there are important overlaps between state and commercial surveillance and privacy issues as well as separate, important advocacy questions in the commercial space.