Chapter 4 is devoted to technical solutions to rectify AI risks and harms. AI for social good projects, human-in-the-loop solutions, de-biasing, AI-generated text, image, and voice detection and testing are presented as potential technical fixes. Detecting AI-generated content remains a major challenge. Human-in-the-loop solutions and testing have proven to be such common-sense practices that they are promoted by AI-producing or -using businesses themselves as well as by laws. AI for social good projects and de-biasing produce a positive impact, but there seems to be a gap between expectations and reality. As is documented throughout this book, the roots of AI risks and harms are not technical; therefore, technical solutions cannot bring about transformative change in the face of AI risks and harms.

Chapter 1 introduces basic terminology. Terms such as artificial intelligence, data, algorithm, machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, large language models, generative AI and symbolic AI are presented to develop a sense of what AI is, how it has evolved, and what it does. This chapter also introduces some of the major conceptual disagreements in the field. Different ideas about how to develop AI in the best way drive disagreements, as well as philosophical differences over what intelligence means and whether machines can develop human-like intelligence.

Chapter 6 is about laws as binding mechanisms to eliminate or mitigate AI risks and harms. Most countries have AI-promotion strategies that devote little or no attention to potential problems. The number of bills proposed in national legislatures to address those problems has been increasing since the late 2010s, but only the European Union and South Korea have thus far legislated laws regulating AI. Despite the absence of AI-centric lawmaking, however, some trends are emerging. First, AI regulation has been taking place, to a limited extent, in AI-adjacent realms such as data privacy and protection, consumer rights, antitrust, and children’s protection. Second, the European Union’s AI Act has set the trend for risk-based, future-proof and technology-neutral legislation that will likely be followed by other countries. Third, the absence of national legislation in the United States, home to most cutting-edge AI technologies from the 1990s to the early 2020s, has led states and cities to launch legal initiatives. And finally, even the successful passage of a law does not address all AI risks and harms – lawmakers’ omission of military AI as an area of regulation is a case in point.

This chapter introduces readers to the main questions, arguments, and debates contained in this book.

Chapter 5 addresses business self-regulation as an AI governance model. Voluntary AI principles and codes of conduct have risen to prominence in the absence of AI laws since the mid 2010s. Numerous large companies have established internal or external advisory boards or councils and responsible AI teams to hold themselves accountable. The evidence on these self-regulatory bodies is mixed: Journalistic reports suggest improvements in business conduct in a number of cases, but one cannot ignore the fact that none of the boards, councils, or teams can force businesses to respect their decisions or suggestions. What is worse, some powerful AI companies have ignored calls to create self-regulatory institutions or disbanded them at the first sight of friction.

The decision by the Northern Ireland Parades Commission in July 2013 to re-route the return leg of an annual Orange Order parade away from the nationalist Ardoyne district in North Belfast sparked four consecutive nights of violent clashes between loyalist rioters and the PSNI. Fears of a repeat of this violence were not realised in July 2014, despite the failure of representatives from both sides to broker a solution to the impasse. July 2015 saw a return to violence as loyalist protesters attacked PSNI officers enforcing the Parades Commission’s determination to prevent the return leg from returning home via its traditional route. Chapter 6 explores what role, if any, tweeters played in escalating and de-escalating tensions surrounding the contentious parade in 2014 and 2015. The lifespan of misinformation and disinformation about the dispute shared on the microblogging site will be examined to assess the reach and potential impact of content that had the potential to generate violence between loyalists and the Ardoyne residents. It will also examine the ways in which tweeters framed the dispute from a rights perspective and whether there was any evidence of Mouffe’s ‘conflictual consensus’ emerging on the platform during this period. A critical thematic analysis of 7,388 #Ardoyne tweets, collected in July 2014 and July 2015, was conducted in order to investigate these issues. These will be contextualised through a content analysis of 44 articles published in Northern Irish and Irish newspapers during the Twelfth week across both years.

Memes and parody accounts are examples of the ‘silly citizenship’ theorised by Hartley (2010) to capture citizens’ ‘playful’ engagement with political issues online. In terms of the latter, these are often deployed to satirise and hold politicians and authority figures to account for their public statements and actions. In the case of Northern Ireland, self-styled non-sectarian ‘parody group’ Loyalists Against Democracy (LAD) emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the flag protests in December 2012. Its supporters argued that the group articulated the views of the ‘silent majority’ by highlighting the bigotry and sectarianism of loyalists on pages such as LPPU. Conversely, critics accused the group of peddling negative stereotypes of working-class loyalists by shaming them for their poor spelling and grammar in their social media comments. Chapter 5 explores the role of LAD in contentious politics in Northern Ireland between December 2012 and November 2013. It presents the results of the first empirical study of content posted on the group’s Facebook and Twitter profiles, with a view to exploring whether such content could persuasively be framed as satire. It will also examine the extent to which loyalists were represented as ‘social abjects’ akin to the ‘chav’ stereotype used to demonise white working-class communities in England (Tyler, 2013). The role of the group in campaigns such as #givepootstheboot will be explored in order to assess its evolving role within the Northern Irish information ecosystem as a focal point for the contestation of contentious political issues.

In Chapter 1, the evolving relationship between social media, contentious politics and social movements is explored. The role of digital media in social movements since 2011 is analysed, using exemplars such as Occupy Wall Street and the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa later labelled the ‘Arab Spring’. The chapter moves on to explore the evolving role of digital media in contentious politics in Northern Ireland. Data from organisations such as OfCom are used to empirically investigate the news consumption practices of citizens and the levels of public trust in professional news media and political institutions in the social media era. Finally, the results of interviews conducted with key stakeholders (N=14) between October 2009 and September 2013 are elaborated, in order to critically evaluate the impact of Web 2.0 on political participation in the deeply divided society prior to the flag protests.

Chapter 2 focuses specifically on the role of social media in the flag protests between December 2012 and March 2013. Speaking at an event on social media and Northern Irish politics held at the University of Ulster in December 2013, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson would claim that social media “hadn’t helped us [the flag protesters] in the slightest”. This chapter empirically investigates this claim by providing the first qualitative study of Loyalist Peaceful Protest Updater (LPPU). This public Facebook page was used by loyalists to coordinate the protests and was suspended in January 2013 after an emergency injunction filed on behalf of an unidentified Catholic man who had been threatened on the page. The results of a thematic analysis of 24,244 comments posted on LPPU and its backup page during January 2013 are presented in order to assess the type of mobilising information provided on the page, and whether there was much evidence of ‘trolling’ by critics of the protests. The chapter contextualises these results through a content analysis of coverage of the flag protests in the three most widely read newspapers in the region, the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News, and the News Letter between 3rd December 2012 and 28 February 2013 (N=347).

The final chapter summarises the main contributions of the book to contemporary debates about the role of social media in contentious politics within divided societies such as Northern Ireland. It considers whether the use of online platforms to spread misinformation and disinformation during contentious public demonstrations is evidence of the information crisis seen in other nation states, or a symptom of the democratic dysfunction in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing institutions. Finally, it explores the implications of citizens’ use of social media during such incidents for promoting peace and reconciliation in the deeply divided society.