The Law School is delighted to welcome Professor David Nelken FBA to kick off our Distinguished Lecture Series 2025-26.
Professor Nelken's lecture is titled 'Platform Governance, Wikipedia and Misinformation' and will be of interest to academics, students, and staff across the University and beyond. The lecture is based upon an article that Professor Nelken has been commissioned to write for the Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences (2026). The lecture will be followed by questions and chaired by Dr Katie Cruz (Bristol Law School).
David is Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law, King's College London. Prior to this, Professor Nelken taught law at Cambridge, Edinburgh, and University College, London, from 1976-1989 before moving to Italy in 1990 as Distinguished Professor of Legal Institutions and Social Change at the University of Macerata. From 1995 to 2013, he was also Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Cardiff University, and from 2010 to 2014 Visiting Professor of Criminology at Oxford University.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy (Law section) and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. On the editorial board of numerous journals, he is also a member of the Independent Board of the SCOPUS (Elsevier) Database of peer-reviewed literature, where he is responsible for evaluating all law journals worldwide. He was a Panel member of Scottish Children's Hearings juvenile justice system 1979-1983, of Italian Regional Crime committees in the 1990's and, amongst many visiting appointments, was the Global Law professor at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, for 2014. He was appointed to the REF Law Committee for 2021.
Abstract
This article surveys writing about Wikipedia governance with special reference to what other social media and networking platforms can learn from it to better deal with misinformation. It samples twenty years of work ranging from writing in computer, media and communication journals to more political science and socio legal type of enquiries so as to focus on who governs Wikipedia, what is governed, and how it is governed. It shows that whilst commentators have suggested there is much to that be learned from Wikipedia its governance is more complicated than is sometimes assumed. Noting the difficulty of defining misinformation it argues that Wikipedia's supposed success in dealing with it has much to do with its ability to redefine what it will count as such for its purposes. Hence it is important to appreciate how other platforms may define it differently for their purposes.
If your interested in attending this event, please register here.