Postgraduate Course: Information: Control and Power (LAWS11246)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
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. |
| Course description |
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.
The aims of this course are to:
1. explore the extent to which access to and use of information and data is controlled;
2. assess the impact of new technologies and business models on existing power relationships between individuals, business and the state;
2. consider the implications of the use and exploitation of information (including personal information) for fundamental rights, fair and contestable online markets, commercial and international development, democratic structures and institutions and other societal values; and
3. assess whether academic and policy debate in this area is progressing in a sufficiently holistically manner, and whether there are opportunities for further interaction of disciplines.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 25 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course will be assessed by the following component(s):
An essay of no more than 5,000 words worth 100% of the total mark.
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| Feedback |
Students are required to actively participate within the class. Participation may take the form of oral or written contributions as well as taking part in-class quizzes and tasks via student response systems such as Top Hat.
Preparation for weekly seminars will take place in self-directed small group settings where students will be asked to prepare responses to group activities relating to the topics that will be considered in the course.
In addition, this course will complement seminar sessions with an extensive process of formative assessment designed to prepare students, in a collaborative manner, for the final summative assessment. Specifically, students will be asked to choose their own essay topic, to prepare an outline for their essay and to give a 15-minute presentation on their chosen topic to their peers during a postgraduate conference at the end of the course.
Students will receive written and oral feedback on each of these elements, including comments on the content, structure, and style of their submissions as well as their general approach to the tasks.
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| 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.
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Additional Information
| 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 oral and written form;
4. Personal effectiveness, e.g. working constructively as a member of a team in group activities;
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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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Ms Judith Rauhofer
Tel: (0131 6)50 2008
Email: Judith.Rauhofer@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Hannah Ackroyd
Tel: (0131 6)50 2008
Email: hackroyd@ed.ac.uk |
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