Disinformation and 'Fake News': Final Report (HC 1791, 2017–19)

The DCMS Select Committee's final report from its two-year inquiry is one of the most important parliamentary documents on the information environment produced by any legislature. The inquiry pursued Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg across multiple continents, subpoenaed documents from Cambridge Analytica, and produced findings on Russian interference in the EU referendum, the inadequacy of electoral law for the digital age, the opacity of digital advertising, and platform liability that were genuinely influential in subsequent UK and EU regulatory deliberation.

The report's political significance lay partly in its process: the DCMS committee demonstrated that parliamentary committees could mount credible technical investigations of digital platforms. The substantive findings shaped the UK's Online Safety Act deliberations and contributed to the EU's DSA development. This remains the landmark parliamentary reference for the accountability of digital platforms.