This article develops the concept of delegated gatekeeping to explain regulatory systems where a primary gatekeeper (the “principal”) delegates revocable roles of support withholder or provider to other gatekeepers (“agents”). Delegation requires that agents assume non-traditional gatekeeping roles such as reputational stewardship (safeguarding the principal’s reputational capital). To illustrate delegated gatekeeping concretely, this article conducts a detailed case study of the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (“AIM”). It argues that reputational incentives can partially alleviate agent gatekeepers’ conflicts of interest, and that these incentives have strengthened on AIM relative to historic levels.

Epistemic injustice happens when a subject is wronged in their “capacity as a knower.” This paper argues that speakers/writers and hearers/readers suffer epistemic injustice under two scenarios: idea appropriation and bullshitting. Epistemic injustice happens when a speaker or writer suffers idea appropriation, where they are deprived of the credit and benefits of their cognitive labor, or when epistemic agents consume bullshit that exploits their limited access to the institutional resources required to interrogate and resist it, treating them as a mere means to an end, e.g., when a politician bullshits voters to secure their vote at election time. These unsavory practices are incentivized by reputational boosts and other social goods with the risk of reputational damage if detected. This paper ends by reviewing how widespread epistemic injustice hampers the epistemic marketplace.

The widespread use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has increased the risk of reputational harm caused by false or “hallucinated” outputs. This article explores how the European Union legal framework, together with selected Member States’ legal systems, addresses liability and remedies for such harms, with particular attention to defamation, product liability, noncontractual liability and data protection. Then, the article analyzes the remedies available to injured parties, focusing on claims for damages, injunctive relief and the exercise of data protection rights. While national legal systems generally allow compensation for nonpecuniary damage resulting from violations of personality rights, the amounts awarded are likely to be minimal due to the limited dissemination of AI-generated content. Consequently, the article argues that prohibitory injunctions aimed at preventing the publication of identical or equivalent false information frequently offer a more robust form of protection than financial redress. Finally, operators of GenAI systems must comply with the principles relating to the processing of personal data, particularly the principle of accuracy and ensure the effective exercise of data protection rights; otherwise, data subjects may bring an action for compensation against the data controller under Article 82 of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Indirect reciprocity is a reputation-based mechanism proposed to explain the evolution of human cooperation. Theoretical models demonstrated that the use of both first-order information (i.e., whether an evaluation target cooperated) and second-order information (i.e., the reputation of an interaction partner of the evaluation target) is critical for the evolution of cooperation. However, empirical findings on the use of second-order information have been mixed. Drawing upon the literature on group-bounded indirect reciprocity, we tested the hypothesis that individuals would be more sensitive to second-order information when evaluating in-group interactions, compared to when evaluating out-group interactions. We conducted a preregistered online experiment (N = 604), where we independently manipulated group membership (in-group vs. out-group), target behaviour (cooperation vs. defection), and recipient reputation (good vs. bad). We found that donors who defected against good recipients were rated more negatively than those who defected against bad recipients, indicating the use of second-order information. Partly consistently with our hypothesis, when individuals evaluated coopering donors, second-order information influenced reputation for in-group donor–recipient interactions more than for out-group donor–recipient interactions. Nevertheless, individuals readily used second-order information, whether or not they evaluated in-group or out-group donor–recipient interactions.

A growing body of work suggests that authoritarian regimes can enhance their external legitimacy by undertaking reform—from democratic or “pseudodemocratic” institutional changes at the domestic level to participation in international efforts to mitigate climate change. Yet the shared theoretical logic underlying this work has received surprisingly little empirical attention. This research contributes by offering findings from an iterative series of original survey experiments conducted over nationally representative samples of US citizens. Study 1 tested the foundational hypothesis—that reforms build external legitimacy—by adopting a simple independent groups design. Studies 2 and 3 subjected that hypothesis to harder tests via conjoint designs, and also evaluated extension hypotheses about when and in what sense “legitimacy” is gained. Across studies, the results consistently demonstrate that reforms (of a variety of types) do generate external legitimacy, offering both positive benefits as well as shielding benefits in keeping with theoretical arguments. The results also provide support for several new and previously undocumented findings concerning the role of reform type, type of legitimacy-derived gain, and the conditions under which such gains are more or less likely to accrue.

Media plays a major role in molding US public opinions about Muslims. This paper assesses the effect of 9/11 events on the US media's framing of the Muslim nonprofit sector. Overall it finds that the press was more likely to represent the Muslim nonprofit negatively post 9/11. However, post 9/11, the media framing of Muslim nonprofits was mixed. While the media was more likely to associate Muslim nonprofits and terrorism, they were also more likely to represent Muslim nonprofits as organizations that faced persecution because of Islamophobia, government scrutiny, or hate attacks against them. These media frames may have contributed to public perceptions that Muslim organizations support terrorism while also raising the alarm amongst various stakeholders that the government and the general public are persecuting the Muslim nonprofit sector.

Public scrutiny and the need for funds in a more competitive environment are pressuring nonprofits to be more consciously aware of their reputation. This study used automated analysis with text mining and topic modeling of 177 articles directly linked to nonprofits’ reputation and published up to 2016. After identifying the most salient topics and conducting an in-depth, critical review of the most significant articles within each topic, four theoretical and managerial implications were identified. First, managers need to develop skills to deal with risk, the Internet, and social networks. Second, risk management is an emergent, still tentative, but important topic waiting for more contributions. Third, researchers can apply lexicons developed and validated by experts to uncover knowledge relevant to the entire nonprofit sector’s organizations. Last, the trends and topics highlighted can help scholars and practitioners make better decisions in research or responses to management challenges.

We examine Twitter data to assess the impact of media exposes on the reputations of two international nonprofits, Oxfam and Save the Children (STC). Using a random sample of 6794 Tweets, we study the daily gap between positive and negative sentiments expressed towards these organizations. The “unweighted gap” and the “weighted gap” (weighted by the number of followers) of the Twitter handle follow broadly the same trajectory with high fluctuation in response to new negative or positive media stories. Twitter handles with large audiences amplify variability in weighted gap. While Oxfam’s reputation did not fully recover to pre-Haiti levels even 6 months after the scandal, STC’s reputation returned to pre-scandal levels in 8 days, although it fluctuated in response to new revelations. Overall, reputation recovery for both organizations was aided when they received celebrity endorsements and focused public attention on their positive activities, especially by linking to visible global events.

This Article brings together two important concepts in international law scholarship that have thus far been studied in isolation from each other: reputation and interpretation. Interesting insights lie hidden in their overlap. While interpretation is still commonly perceived as a sterile exercise in “legal logic,” the Article suggests that it is often better studied as a social practice, within which the relationships between the interpreters that are arguing with each other frequently matter as much as the arguments themselves. The Article therefore suggests a new way of looking at interpretation in international law: Interpretation as a practice of reputation management, where collective actors like states present themselves to others in the interpretations they adopt, and are evaluated by various audiences on the basis of these interpretations. The main argument can be summarized like this: If international law is relatively indeterminate, interpretation is a situated choice. By making that choice, an interpreter reveals something fundamental about itself to its audiences. Interpreters therefore carefully manage their interpretive expressions out of a desire to be well-regarded by these audiences. This phenomenon of reputation management has important implications for the practice of interpretation in international law.