Professor Ma Changshan from East China University of Political Science and Law delivered an academic lecture on "Legal Control of Digital Power" at the Law School

On the afternoon of November 30th, 2023, at the mock court in the Law Faculty Building, Professor Ma Changshan, a professor and doctoral supervisor at East China University of Political Science and Law, was invited to give an academic lecture on "Legal Control of Digital Power" at the Law School of Nanchang University. Professor Qiu Ben, from the Faculty of Law, presided over the lecture, and more than 100 teachers and students, including Vice Dean Zhang Endian, were in attendance.

Before the lecture, Professor Qiu delivered a welcoming speech and introduced Professor Ma Changshan's achievements in academic activities, talent cultivation, and research projects over the years.

Professor Ma Changshan's lecture was divided into three parts. The first part discussed the background of the digital power age. With the continuous development of the digital society, reflected in the physical space, business logic, natural person model, and distribution justice, behind the diversification, flatness, and decentralization of the digital era, there is a tendency for power expansion. The binary structure of the government and society has also been transformed into a tripartite structure consisting of governments, platforms, and society, with platforms serving as "public infrastructure" and "gatekeepers." The second part revealed the operational logic of digital power from three aspects: digital empowerment, platform operation, and automatic control. In terms of digital empowerment, Professor Ma talked about self-empowerment and institutional innovation, balanced empowerment, digital inclusion, and the digitization of everything. The entire data governance process should be infused with security. Whether it is algorithmic administration, intelligent justice, or platform algorithmic decision-making, it is necessary to include digital due processes and ensure that power operates in a standardized and transparent way. This can effectively solve the legitimacy and rationality issues of algorithmic decision-making and promote the implementation of algorithmic openness, interpretability, and accountability. The third part discussed the legal constraints on digital power. He explained that modern rule of law is gradually transforming into digital rule of law, and the development direction of digital rule of law is divided into digital identity, digital behavior, digital relationships, digital justice, and digital order. Legal constraints should establish the value of digital justice and better construct a digital rule system, explore digital due processes, effectively protect digital human rights, and cultivate digital citizen capabilities to create the "Chinese model" of digital rule of law, and contribute to the development of China's digital rule of law programme, thus promoting the formation of a global digital rule of law community.

With abundant examples from judicial practice and daily life, Professor Ma Changshan vividly explained the importance of digital citizenship rights, allowing the teachers and students in attendance to gain a deeper insight into the legal control of digital power.

At the end of the lecture, in the lively atmosphere at the scene, Professor Ma Changshan discussed the issues of legal control of digital power with four teachers and students present. Finally, Professor Qiu Ben took the opportunity to summarize and put forth his own thoughts. He pointed out that digital production and digitization have brought tremendous changes to the whole society, but they have also brought severe problems for the construction of the rule of law society, and the challenges faced by digital human rights require the strengthening of digital power constraints and the control of digital social risks. This academic lecture on "Legal Control of Digital Power" was successful.