Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 17 February 2022

Committee on Public Petitions

Annual Reports of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman: Press Ombudsman

Photo of Emer HigginsEmer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the ombudsman for his time and his comprehensive opening statement. I was particularly interested to hear about the service his office provides in terms of addressing individual complaints, and his comments in regard to the ability of social media to, as he put it, tarnish debates. I am keen to understand his perspective on the online safety and media regulation Bill and, in particular, its approach to individual complaints. I know from the victims of online abuse of exploitation and bullying and the organisations that represent them, such as BodyWhys, CyberSafeKids, SpunOut, Jigsaw and many more, that while the online safety and media regulation Bill is a welcome and progressive step, that many organisations working on the ground feel that a mechanism for individual complaints is necessary, and I support them in this. I agreed with Mr. Feeney when he said recently that going through a social media platform to have your complaint dealt with can often be difficult and lengthy. It can feel like the social media companies must be drowning in such a huge number of complaints that they just cannot keep up with. That is further supported by the recent whistleblower claims from the former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, who claims that Facebook and Instagram actively encourage and promote negative and abusive content because those posts sell more, get more clicks and garner more attention. I would be very interested to know Mr. Feeney's views on an individual complaints mechanism for social media and how he thinks that could be implemented.

Recently I have also been looking at how we might include overly edited or photo-shopped media advertisements in the definition of harmful content. I would be keen to understand whether this is something he thinks there is room to provide for in print media as well. I believe there is provision to further define categories of harmful content beyond the current definition of cyberbullying that may look at other things as well as self-harm and eating disorders. I would be keen to hear if he had any views on how we could expand that definition and the parameters. I say that in the context of the online safety and media regulation Bill but I think there is an opportunity for print media too. He spoke about the differences in terms of journalism, advertisement, investment and regulation between print media and online platforms, and the vulnerability of print journalism to modern technological developments.

All members of this committee know the value of online political activity. A boosted post can reach as many constituents as a leaflet drop. A targeted advertisement can reach the exact audience we want to pinpoint. We can share information ourselves even where a journalist deems it not newsworthy or, indeed, not accurate. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram have replaced the platforms that politicians used to stand on outside the church gates. The power of politicians' message is not just what they say but how many times people share it and how much that narrative is amplified. That is how we get our message out and how all of us try to influence democracy. We saw the fantastic benefits of that with online movements like #HomeToVote, which amplified social movements like repeal the eighth and the marriage equality referendum.

That is the benefit of social media but there are, as alluded to by the Ombudsman, also great threats, including to democracy, because social media allows for such easy and viral spreading of disinformation. It also allows for the generation of online hate messages and bots that are created solely for political gain. As Mr. Feeney said, social media is not subject to the same regulation as the print media industry. It is clear that we need additional investment in how we tackle that. It is not good enough to mandate social media platforms to remove content. We need to implement fines to ensure that actually happens. While that is part of what the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill is about, does that legislation go far enough?

Democracy is fragile. We saw that when supporters of President Trump, egged on by his tweets, stormed Capitol Hill. Allowing social media to become a weapon, which we certainly do not allow in the case of the print media, poses a threat. I am very interested in hearing Mr. Feeney's views on that.

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