Quo vadis, regulators? Media in minority languages meet AI

Oral Presentation
(Scientific field: Language and law, Language diversity, vitality and endangerment, Language rights and accessibility, Language variation, change, pragmatics and interaction)

Quo Vadis, regulators? Media in minority languages meet AI
This paper sets out to explore a selection of new and far-reaching questions in the light of opportunities and threats to minority languages in the human-machine era. It will focus in particular on regulation and policy relating to the use of minority languages in the media. The paper will draw on the authors’ long-standing experience of academic and expert advisory engagement with relevant issues. As has been repeatedly shown (McGonagle and Moring 2023, the OSCE HCNM’s Tallinn Guidelines 2019), regulation has all but followed the technological developments in the media fi eld, leaving minority languages far behind a level of support that equipped them in earlier media generations. Optimists may point to opportunities for certain more resourceful languages and narrow groups of activists, with a take-up of computational linguistics and front-line use of AI. On the other hand, smaller language environments, lacking necessary resources in the form of digitalized data banks available for data mining, and a market big enough to support investments, lag behind. The human machine-era affects all aspects of society, which means that measures to avoid negative developments and seek to induce a positive turn must be based on a holistic approach, leaning on various innovative strategies. These would include (at least) legal and regulatory measures (further developing measures recommended under the ECRML (1992, and subsequent opinions), various OSCE media guidelines, etc.), policy measures that critically look at the core ingredients, “opportunity”, “capacity” and “desire”, as suggested by Grin and Vaillancourt (1999), and take a new approach to the very concept of ”language” as a boundary-driven concept. This evidently also includes anew understanding of power-broking in, and between, language communities. In the past, the media - and social and other new media actors – have always contributed to the development and consolidation of emerging information and communication technologies. Regulation of the developing media often struggled to keep pace with technological change; old regulation was often repurposed for new technologies. This regulatory strategy of “adaptive replication” (McGonagle 2020) worked quite well for a long period, but the changes induced by the Internet of things and the machine-human era are so sudden and so forceful that we must urgently enquire whether a complete regulatory rethink is now necessary. In our effort to contribute to a reshaping of the media-policy map in the human-machine era, we wish to reach out to scholars working with language technology as well as to scholars working with legal measures and scholars working with attitudes and social psychology. We have seen it coming, but perhaps without appreciating its full force, speed and sophistication.

References:
Council of Europe (1992). European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), CETS No. 148, 1992.
Grin, F. & Vaillancourt, F. (1999). The cost-effectiveness evaluation of minority language policies: Case studies on Wales, Ireland ant the Basque Country. Flensburg: European Centre for Minority Issues.
McGonagle, T., & Moring, T. (2023). Language policy and regulation in the old and new media. In M. Gazzola, F. Grin, L. Cardinal and K. Heugh (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language Policy and Planning, London: Routledge.
McGonagle, T. (2020). Free Expression and Internet Intermediaries: The Changing Geometry of European Regulation. In G. Frosio (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Online Intermediary Liability Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 467-485.
OSCE (2019). Tallinn Guidelines on National Minorities and the Media in the Digital Age. OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM).
Keywords: Minority Language and AI, Media Regulation, Media Policy, Language Interaction
Authors: Tarlach McGonagle, Tom Moring