Biography
Nina Shengelia, a UK-qualified lawyer based in Tbilisi, Georgia, combines her expertise in academics, legal practice, and media literacy with a focus on disinformation. With extensive experience across various non-governmental organisations and governmental positions, including roles at the Communications Commission and the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, her research interests span data privacy, content moderation, AI, DSA, DMA, hate speech, disinformation, online safety, human rights, and platform governance.
As the visionary founder of the Social Media Council, she has united respected legal scholars globally to create a forum dedicated to influencing policy discussions and decisions in legal technology. Her extensive worldwide experience and significant contributions to legal studies highlight her dedication to policy-making in a rapidly evolving technological environment. Additionally, her expertise has been instrumental in developing a co-regulatory regime for digital platforms, establishing her as a leading figure in digital human rights, disinformation, and policy-making.
Social Media Council is a co-regulatory institution for digital platforms that addresses urgent needs in Georgia's unique geopolitical context, where disinformation and hate speech are widespread. This initiative aligns with UNESCO’s Guidelines for the governance of digital platforms and the EU’s requirements for Georgia's EU candidacy. Dissemination of disinformation and hate speech through social media platforms in Georgia, has especially increased since the breakout of the Russo-Ukrainian war. In December 2023, Georgia was granted the status of an EU candidate country on the condition that it fulfills nine requirements, the first of which is to combat disinformation, foreign information manipulation, and interference regarding the European Union and its values. As Georgian government agencies are not effective in timely informing the public about Russian disinformation narratives and mitigating their harmful impact and on the contrary, the government itself often acts as a disinformation agent through trolls and bots. As a Policy Leader Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance (STG) of the European University Institute, she will primarily focus on the development of the Social Media Council in Georgia, which is a solution to Georgia’s disinformation problem between state regulation and no regulation at all.
Her background includes an LLB from King’s College London and an LLM from BPP University, London, where she was admitted as a solicitor by the Law Society of England and Wales in 2011. Nina is a DAAD alumni and a member of lecturer of Media Law at Tbilisi State University. She is the author of numerous scientific articles, podcasts and publications on the topic of digital policy, disinformation, human rights, platform governance and content moderation.