Right to Be Forgotten: How national identity, political orientation, and capitalist ideology structured a trans-Atlantic debate on information access and control

This study examines U.S. and British media coverage of the “right to be forgotten” in the light of their legal approaches and public attitudes toward privacy. Algorithmic and qualitative textual analysis techniques are combined to uncover the ideologies and interests that structure the discourse and shape its outcome. The analysis reveals that U.S. media, irrespective of their perceived “liberal” or “conservative” orientation, treat users’ online privacy as subservient to the business interests of technology companies—in line with the country’s lax legal approach. The coverage is more diverse in Britain, where the legal concept of privacy is also more stringent.