December 19, 2024

Journal of International Media & Entertainment Law Publishes Volume 10, Issue 2

The Journal of International Media & Entertainment Law is pleased to announce the publication of Volume 10, Issue 2.  JIMEL, the scholarly journal of the Biederman Institute, is published in association with the American Bar Association’s Forum on Communications Law and the ABA’s Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries.

JIMEL’s supervising editor, Professor Michael M. Epstein, remarks, "Volume 10, Issue 2 is the second installment of articles from JIMEL’s symposium, In the Shadow of Territorial Conflict: Legacies of Sovie-Era Media Control and Speech Norms. The scholars and policymakers in this issue offer timely insights on the media ecosystem in lands once controlled by the Soviet Union.  There is an added layer of poignancy to much of the research. War, civil unrest, and territorial annexation have magnified the consequences of information disorder throughout much of the region, including in the under-reported events that led to the fall of the Artsakh Republic, an ethnic Armenian enclave, in September 2023."

This issue begins with Fatullayev as a Model of Post-Soviet Media Control in the Shadow of Armed Conflicts an essay by Dr. Andrei Richter, research professor at Comenius University in Bratislava. Adapted from his keynote address at the symposium, the essay asks whether media control in the region is a Soviet-era legacy adapted to modern times. Richter’s principal focus is the court case of Fatullayev v Azerbaijan, which led to a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in 2010 and in 2022.

In Consequences of Inaction: An Inquiry into International Criminal Liability of Social Media Companies for Artsakh 2020, Rajika L. Shah, shares her research into the potential liability of social media companies in the Nagorno-Karabakh war and how negative social media posts can lead to real-life hate crimes against Armenian communities. Shah is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where she directs the Justice for Atrocities Clinic.

Weaponization of Social Media: The Cause of the Conflict Between Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh, by Robert Avetisyan, addresses strategies to mitigate disinformation and hate on social media in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict by promoting information literacy and demanding adherence to the criminalization of dissemination of stigma, prejudices, and other dangerous speech that incites violence. Ambassador Avetisyan has served as the Permanent Representative of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (also known as the Artsakh Republic) to the United States.

Russell L. Weaver’s symposium contribution, Social Media, Propaganda, and the Ukrainian Conflict, examines how Russia has used the internet to try to manipulate and control public opinion regarding the Ukraine War. Weaver cites instances in which Russia planted falsehoods on official news outlets as a way of blurring the facts, defining false narratives, and manipulating audiences. He is a Professor of Law and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville. 

Completing this issue is Media Coverage and State Propaganda in Armed Conflicts: An International Law Perspective at the Armenian-Azerbaijan “Propaganda War,” by Ines Gillich. The author presents a stark contrast between news coverage of the conflict by international media and reporting by regional sources and examines media issues under the lens of public international law. Gillich is Associate Professor of Public Law, European Law and Public International Law, at the University of Cologne.

Find the latest issue of Southwestern's Journal of International Media and Entertainment Law posted on our website on the JIMEL page.