Module 2

3 ECTS

The term regulation has gained prominence in recent years in many different (academic) fields, including law, economics and finance, political science and policy making, environmental science, etc.. In this course we will look at the ways in which a wide variations of so-called ‘regulation’ are used to steer, guide, limit or promote specific behaviours by governments, institutions, businesses, sectors, and individuals across digital environments. We will discuss the strategies of regulation, the reasons why specific forms of regulation are chosen, the specific societal, economic, environmental, legal, political or public policy reasons, and what rationales underlie different forms of regulation and their effectiveness. Students will come to understand different regulatory strategies lawmakers and policymakers can choose from when tackling regulatory challenges.  Students should gain an understanding of the pros and cons of different types of regulation, and will learn to make an informed choice for, and to provide proper argumentative underpinnings for, specific forms of regulation in specific cases.

After an introduction we will focus explicitly on regulation and digital technologies. After briefly discussing the ways in which, and the reasons why digital technologies are regulated, we will turn to the main topic of this course: the use of law and technology to steer, guide, and regulate individuals’ behaviour. This has come to be known as ‘techno-nudging’ or ‘techno-regulation’. Techno-nudging can take several forms, ranging from nudging and persuading users to follow a certain course of action. Hard-coding normative or legal codes into technologies to make certain behaviours impossible and stimulate others. The theory is that by hard-coding rules into digital technologies and networked environments, users will automatically comply rather than being asked to make a choice on whether to follow these rules. Since regulation by technology is cost-effective, fool proof, and an efficient way of ensuring regulatees’ compliance with rules or norms, it is not surprising that this approach has spread rapidly. For policy makers, regulators, and technology developers using nudging is considered a valuable solution in ensuring compliance with a wide variety of norms and rules. Sometimes it is used to enforce legal rules, but often times there is an economic or practical drive behind the choice for this form of regulation. The lecture then moves to specific techniques of regulation before moving towards two different case studies (platform regulation and fake news/disinformation) that puts the lessons of the first nine weeks to practical use.