Online Disinformation and Political Discourse: Applying a Human Rights Framework

Moynihan's 2019 Chatham House paper is a foundational document in the application of international human rights law to online disinformation and platform regulation. The paper examines freedom of expression, the right to impart information, and the right to participate in political life — assessing how platform disinformation governance interacts with each.

The human rights framing provides a principled basis for distinguishing between legitimate counter-disinformation measures and measures that constitute censorship or political speech suppression. This distinction is operationally important for practitioners designing counter-disinformation programmes that need to be legally defensible, and for policymakers developing regulatory frameworks that can withstand human rights scrutiny.