In modern societies media have a central role as it is through the media that citizens in particular have access to information about their society. Information about society is crucial for citizens to be able to make thoughtful decisions in a democratic spirit. Political campaigns have started using personally targeted online advertising to reach new voters. This phenomenon is called “microtargeting” and the purpose is to identify individual voters that the parties are most likely to convince. Cambridge Analyticas operations, which are largely based on microtargeting, challenge democratic principles. This study purpose is divided in two parts. First is to map out and explain Cambridge Analyticas operations by analyzing from a democratic perspective. Second is to compile and systematize the proposed measures on democracy problems that are brought up in the debate about Cambridge Analytica. Idea analysis is the method of this paper, and it is of both descriptive and explanatory nature. It appears that Cambridge Analytica operations mainly undermines citizens' right to enlightened understanding and a free and factual debate. This undermines democratic principles in several ways. Furthermore, the studies show that the debate orbits around antitrust laws, how the legislation should formulate on how internet companies should handle personal information and what is the Internet companies own obligation in question. A smaller part of the debate also highlights the citizens' own capacity to be vigilant and critical of the Internet.

Secure email systems that use end-to-end encryption are the best method we have for ensuring user privacy and security in email communication. However, the adoption of secure email remains low, with previous studies suggesting mainly that secure email is too complex or inconvenient to use. However, the perspectives of those who have, in fact, chosen to use an encrypted email system are largely overlooked. To understand these perspectives, we conducted a semi-structured interview study that aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the mindsets underlying adoption and use of secure email services. Our participants come from a variety of countries and vary in the amount of time they have been using secure email, how often they use it, and whether they use it as their primary account. Our results uncover that a defining reason for adopting a secure email system is to avoid surveillance from big tech companies. However, regardless of the complexity and accuracy of a person's mental model, our participants rarely send and receive encrypted emails, thus not making full use of the privacy they could obtain. These findings indicate that secure email systems could potentially find greater adoption by appealing to their privacy advantages, but privacy gains will be limited until a critical mass are able to join these systems and easily send encrypted emails to each other.

This thesis aimed to describe what (planning for) data centers reveal about the power relations between big tech companies and Sweden’s municipalities and national government. Data centers owned by large IT companies serve global interests but are dependent on and have an impact on local infrastructures, as demonstrated by for instance the large amount of energy they require. A Microsoft data center in Staffanstorp, located in Skåne, served as a case study. Based on various types of documents, the study analyzed what this hyperscale data center uncovers about the influence of big tech on urban planning in Sweden. For this, theoretical concepts such as cloud infrastructures, the hidden materiality of the cloud, and clouding have been used. The thesis explored the motivations behind choosing Staffanstorp to establish a hyperscale data center. Sweden is an attractive data center location for big tech companies. The image corporations have of Sweden is an important contributing factor here, as it is not just factual characteristics of a location that determine its attractiveness, but first and foremost how that location is perceived. The analysis therefore also highlights the promotional strategies that the government and the municipality of Staffanstorp have employed to attract data centers, in which Business Sweden appeared to have played a key role. Among other significant factors that contribute to big tech’s interest in Sweden are cheap renewable energy, a 98% electricity tax reduction, and a business-friendly environment. Processes behind the planning of Microsoft’s data center in Staffanstorp have also been studied by looking at the developments in the implementation of the data center. Reflecting on the outcomes of Microsoft’s data center by comparing these developments to plans and visions for Sweden and Staffanstorp shows that the promise of jobs for a data center location is paradoxical and that hyperscale data centers potentially endanger the energy supply. The research concludes that rather than corporations directly influencing Swedish planning, Sweden indirectly allows them to have a large influence.

Competition and data protection law are two powerful regimes simultaneously shaping the use of digital information, which has given rise to new interactions between these areas of law. While most views on this intersection emphasize that competition and data protection law must work together, nascent developments indicate that these legal regimes may sometimes conflict.  In the first place, firms faced with antitrust allegations are to an increasing extent invoking the need to protect the privacy of their users to justify their impugned conduct. Here, the conduct could either be prohibited by competition law despite of data protection or justified under competition law because of data protection. In the EU, no such justification attempt has reached court-stage, and it remains unclear how an enforcer ought to deal with such a claim. In the second place, competition law can mandate a firm to provide access to commercially valuable personal data to its rivals under a competition law remedy. Where that is the case, the question arising in this connection is whether an enforcer can and should design the remedy in a way that aligns with data protection law. If so, the issue remains of how that ought to be done. The task of the thesis has been to explore these issues, legally, economically, and coherently.  The thesis has rendered four main conclusions. First, data protection has a justified role in EU competition law in two ways. On the one hand, enhanced data protection can increase the quality of a service and may thus be factored in the competitive analysis as a dimension of quality. On the other, data protection as a human right must be guaranteed in the application of competition law. Second, these perspectives can be squared with the criteria for justifying competition breaches, in that data protection can be invoked to exculpate a firm from antitrust allegations. Third, in that context, the human rights dimension of data protection may entail that the enforcer must consider data protection even if it is not invoked. However, allowing data protection interests to override competition law in this manner is relatively inefficient as it may lead to less innovation, higher costs, and lower revenues. Fourth, the profound importance of data protection in the EU necessarily means that enforcers should accommodate data protection interests in designing competition law remedies which mandate access to personal data. This may be done in several ways, including requirements to anonymize data before providing access, or to oblige the firm to be compliant with data protection law in the process of providing access. The analysis largely confirms that anonymization is the preferable option.