This chapter examines the phenomenon of disinformation in the digital era and its implications for freedom of expression. It explores how the rapid dissemination of false, manipulated, and misleading information – termed a ‘disinfodemic’ – poses threats to human rights, democracy, and public trust. The chapter outlines the historical roots of disinformation, the technological factors that enable it, and the responses by public and private actors to mitigate its harmful effects. The chapter differentiates between disinformation (intentional), misinformation (unintentional), and malinformation (genuine information used to harm), while highlighting their diverse forms, such as fake news, deepfakes, and conspiracy theories. Disinformation erodes public trust, affects electoral integrity, threatens public health, and harms individuals’ rights to information and privacy. The chapter emphasises the necessity of finding a balance between combating disinformation and preserving freedom of expression.

This chapter explores the challenges of applying human rights frameworks to the digital realm through the lens of non-coherence theory. This theory posits that human rights in the digital domain differ fundamentally from their offline counterparts owing to shifts in meaning, scope, and application. The chapter critically examines the assumption that offline human rights norms can be seamlessly transposed into the digital environment, highlighting the distortions and variances that arise in this process. It also delves into epistemological and ontological concerns, such as the relativity of human rights in the digital space, and introduces new conceptual frameworks such as the equilibrium of relative rights thesis. The chapter highlights discrepancies in how rights, such as privacy and dignity, manifest online compared with offline, arguing that these differences necessitate a rethinking of legal frameworks. The chapter challenges the traditional notion of absolute human rights, arguing that digital environments introduce a relativity that shifts the balance between competing rights (e.g., privacy versus freedom of expression).

The chapter focuses on contemporary challenges at the intersection of the digital boom, international investment, and human rights. It examines the evolving dynamics of investment in digital technologies, highlighting the need for a delicate balance between promoting international investment and identifying or protecting fundamental rights. It looks into the rapid progress of technologies and their impact on legal frameworks. In a landscape where countries are actively engaging in digital investment for growth and development, the chapter examines the governance of these relationships both through specific interconnections of the main pillars and through international treaties. The strategic and significant ramifications of these treaties are highlighted, while emphasising the role of specific national regulations, particularly in areas such as intellectual property, national security, and economic progress. Cases where actors in the field of international investment law are able to gain control over technologies highlight the wider implications for public policy. In conclusion, the chapter highlights the need for legal frameworks to adapt appropriately to the digital age.

This chapter analyses the evolving role of states in safeguarding freedom of expression within the digital environment, particularly on social media platforms. It highlights how states have both negative obligations (to avoid undue interference) and positive obligations (to actively protect and ensure the right to freedom of expression). The European Court of Human Rights and other international bodies emphasise that states must create a favourable environment for public debate, protect speakers from harm, and ensure media pluralism. These obligations extend to relations between private parties, including users and internet intermediaries. The chapter emphasises that freedom of expression in the digital age requires states to actively safeguard rights while balancing regulation and accountability. It warns against reliance on private platforms for enforcing speech limitations and underscores the importance of transparent, rights-based governance.

This introductory chapter outlines the key themes and scope of the book, exploring how digital technologies reshape fundamental rights, create new regulatory challenges, and deepen existing inequalities. It describes the role of the Global Digital Human Rights Network in shaping this book and the benefits of this interdisciplinary network for the analysis provided in the chapters. Central to the coherence of the book’s narrative is the innovative use of fundamental questions, forming the cornerstones of each of the parts of the volume. The book is structured around four core questions: (a) What difference does it make to move online? (b) How should freedom of expression be applied in the digital environment? (c) How should human rights law respond to the challenges of digital technologies? and (d) What challenges do vulnerable groups face in the digital realm? By framing its analysis around fundamental questions and diverse regional contexts, the book aims to provide a comprehensive and forward-looking examination of human rights in the digital era.

This chapter explores the systemic inequalities exacerbated by unequal access to digital technologies, known as the digital divide. This divide disproportionately affects vulnerable populations such as women, older people, and rural communities, limiting their access to services, education, and opportunities. The chapter investigates the digital divide’s root causes, including socio-economic disparities, geographic isolation, cultural and language barriers, technological gaps, and insufficient policy interventions. It emphasises the human rights implications of this divide, such as restricted access to education, healthcare, and democratic participation. It also examines international and regional policy responses, noting their shortcomings in addressing the issue comprehensively. The chapter concludes by emphasising the urgent need for inclusive policies, targeted interventions, and international cooperation to bridge the digital divide and ensure that digitalisation benefits all, especially those most at risk of exclusion.

This conversation brings together national and international policymakers to discuss the impact of digitalisation on access to justice. The background of the discussion is provided by the United Nation’s Global Goal 16 to ‘provide access to justice for all’. The policymakers contributing to this conversation represent the ministries of justice of Germany and Japan, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies. The discussants explore the potential of technology to provide meaningful access to law and justice. They do so within the context of their organisation’s policy initiatives such as digitalising courts and other justice institutions. Referring to reform experiences, they pay attention to facilitators and barriers of technological change. The policymakers also consider the risks of technology for access to justice and emphasise the need to keep digital vulnerability in mind.

This chapter focuses on the litigation that followed the tsunami, which hit the Okawa Elementary School. The tsunami resulted in the death of the children visiting the school. The following litigation concerned the question of whether appropriate safety measures had been put in place at the school before the tsunami occurred. The two lawyers leading the litigation for the parents of the children report on how they used innovative approaches in the litigation proceedings. The legal innovation employed concerns the composition of the litigation team, the involvement of the children’s parents, the creation of witness statements addressing the emotional aspects of the disaster, the identification of the entity that should be liable, the doctrine determining liability, digitalisation of litigation and the distribution of risk in modern societies.

Chapter 1 provides a broader picture of electronic evidence and digitalisation. After an overview of the latest EU digital and security strategies and their basic principles, it analyses specific far-reaching legislative instruments based on new ideas of EU criminal law prevention, reaction and cooperation in the digital age. It then analyses the main right affected by the new approach and instruments – the right to privacy – from a historical perspective and a modern understanding through concepts developed initially by the case law of the US Supreme Court. It addresses the question of what legal boundaries are necessary in the digital age for such a right to still be an effective one. Last, the chapter looks at the aspects of digitalisation in the EU criminal law justice area that pose the most questions when comparing digital cross-border cooperation with classical cross-border cooperation based on mutual recognition. It considers judicial (court) authorisation and its meaning, oversight and extraterritorial application of legislation in that regard.

In this chapter, I show how the current shift to digitalising tax administration in Kenya is connected to its colonial fiscal structures both in its design and implementation. Firstly, the idea that technology can help economic development in countries like Kenya has existed since colonial times and still features in current policies that endorse technology for economic development. Secondly, colonial structures are also present in the implementation strategies of a digital platform like the e-filing system central in this case study as they rely on colonial infrastructures for implementation. ITax, the e-filing system that is the focus of this chapter, was implemented quite rapidly and made mandatory within a short period. This chapter argues that the ‘promise’ of digitalisation as a driver of sustainability, modernisation, and economic growth is outweighed by the harm done by colonial history impacting its practice. I argue that colonial fiscal policies are still shaping Kenya’s tax practices. A closer look at Kenya’s colonial fiscal history is important for understanding how the current tax systems are shaped and informed by past practices.

This chapter investigates tax payments and self-making amongst Romanian migrants in London. Vicol demonstrates how taxation is a mode of anchoring oneself in a moral order premised on self-sufficiency. Although the UK’s mainstream media cast Romanian migrants through tropes of welfare dependency, Romanian self-narrations as hard working, taxpaying subjects enabled interlocutors to constitute themselves as good migrants. However, becoming a taxpayer in practice was also an exercise in a particular type of bureaucratic literacy. A host of digital barriers, language deficiencies, and unhelpful bureaucrats drove many to seek out private consultants who made a business of helping their co-nationals decode their obligations to HM Revenue and Customs. Thus, this chapter also explores taxpaying as a technical exercise of making oneself legible through the language of the fiscal authority. Taxation becomes part of the making of the migrant subject. It is about the paradoxical ways in which a digitising state premised on self-reliance prompts affirmations of independence at the level of discourse, while simultaneously generating new networks of dependency in practice.