Postgraduate Course: Information: Control and Power (LAWS11180)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will investigate, through a range of legal disciplines and perspectives, the growing focus placed on, and value attached to, information by society, governments, businesses and individuals. It will explore how information affects the power relationships between those actors and stakeholders and assess the impact on those relationships of its control and misuse. The course will examine the role that various legal frameworks can take to address existing and evolving power imbalances with a view to creating or maintaining a 'power equilibrium' designed to protect fundamental rights in a democratic society.
The course will consider legal regimes seeking to address:
1. Intellectual and information privacy and the use of personal information for commercial and public interest purposes;
2. online harms and safety concerns in the attention economy, including harmful and illegal content, disinformation, and generative AI;
3. platform and data power, abuse of dominant positions in zero price markets and the interplay between competition law and data protection law;
4. surveillance capitalism and the generation and commercial exploitation of person data as 'behavioural surplus' through online platforms and AI systems;
5. the role of (state) surveillance in 'social sorting' to create 'categories of suspicion' and 'categories of entitlement';
6. the use of information and AI systems to improve the efficiency of public service provision in a way that maintains and exacerbates existing biases and marginalisations in society
Wide-ranging international perspectives will be examined, with contributions sought from students in respect of their own jurisdictions. |
| Course description |
Week 1: "Why are we here?" - The role of information in society
Week 2: "The right to control who knows what about me" - Information privacy
Week 3: "All my friends are influencers now!" - The hidden cost of the attention economy
Week 4: "Fake everything: Where is our shared reality?" - Disinformation (turbo-charged)
Week 5: "AI know what you did last summer!" - Online content: Access, targeting and control
Week 6: "Information is (data) power" - Platforms, competition and interoperability
Week 7: "Putting people in boxes" - Surveillance and Social Control I: Surveillance capitalism, law and political economy
Week 8: "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?" - Surveillance and social control II: Categorisation and conditioning effects
Week 9: "Automating Inequality" - Information, algorithms and power in subordinate relationships
Week 10: "We're all facing the same storm, but we're not all in the same boat" - Decolonising information rights
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | Please contact the online learning team at law.online@ed.ac.uk |
| Additional Costs | Students should have regular and reliable access to the Internet. |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 40,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
156 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One essay of up to 4,000 words (60%) and a discussion portfolio (40%) of up to 5000 words, including posts from at least seven weekly sessions
|
| Feedback |
Students will have the opportunity to obtain formative feedback over the course of the semester. The feedback provided will assist students in their preparation for the summative assessment.
Details of the School's feedback policy will be available at the start of the course.
|
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- assess when rights or obligations arise under relevant legislation;
- analyse the extent to which developments in the legal frameworks governing information rights can impact upon the various relationships between individuals, businesses, and the State;
- assess whether those legal frameworks manage to balance these interests appropriately;
- form a view on the roles of IP, data protection law, competition law, and other laws, regulation, human rights and ethics in the field of information control, and their implications for private, public and corporate interests wherever situated;
- assess on what conditions and to what extent control of information should be possible and identify situations where rights to create, share and access information may conflict with rights to privacy and personal autonomy and the interests of a democratic society.
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Reading List
There is no core textbook.
A detailed list of key resources will be available at the start of the course.
We will consult a range of books, commentaries and articles, which will be available in the School of Law library or on DiscoverEd. There will also be much use of online material, including videos, podcasts, journals, blogs, regulatory guidance, CJEU case law and legislation. |
Additional Information
| Course URL |
https://edin.ac/3dHlkVc |
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Students will develop their skills and abilities in:
1. Research and enquiry, through e.g. selecting and deploying appropriate research techniques;
2. Personal and intellectual autonomy, e.g. developing the ability to independently assess the relevance and importance of primary and secondary sources;
3. Communication, e.g. skills in summarising and communicating information and ideas effectively in written form;
4. Personal effectiveness, e.g. working constructively as a member of an online community;
5. Students will also develop their technical/practical skills, throughout the course, e.g. in articulating, evidencing and sustaining a line of argument, and engaging in a convincing critique of another's arguments.
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| Special Arrangements |
This course is taught by online learning. |
| Additional Class Delivery Information |
This course is taught by online learning. |
| Keywords | Information Privacy,Surveillance Capitalism,Algorithmic Bias,GenAI,Decolonising Information Rights |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Ms Judith Rauhofer
Tel: (0131 6)50 2008
Email: Judith.Rauhofer@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Clare Polson
Tel: (0131 6)51 9704
Email: Clare.Polson@ed.ac.uk |
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