The Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (CDMSI) has formally adopted the Feasibility Study on Benefits and Challenges to Freedom of Expression in Immersive Realities, marking a significant step toward ensuring human-rights-based governance of emerging extended-reality (XR) technologies.

Developed with expert support and informed by extensive multi-stakeholder consultations, the study provides a first comprehensive mapping of how immersive technologies, including virtual, augmented and mixed reality, affect the exercise of freedom of expression.

It highlights both the transformative potential of XR for creativity, civic participation and cultural exchange, and the heightened risks linked to surveillance, data exploitation, harassment, manipulative design, and unequal access.

The study concludes that the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 10, offers a robust and adaptable foundation for addressing these challenges, while acknowledging areas where interpretative guidance and complementary soft-law instruments may be required. It stresses that immersive environments blur the lines between speech and behaviour, require new approaches to content and behavioural moderation, and introduce unprecedented forms of biometric and behavioural data collection with implications for privacy and expression.

In adopting the study, the CDMSI agreed that any future work should proceed through a staged approach, beginning with clarification of how existing freedom of expression standards apply in immersive realities. This may later be followed by further guidance to support member States, technologists, civil society and platforms in upholding human rights in evolving digital environments.

The study will inform the Council of Europe’s ongoing efforts to ensure that technological innovation strengthens, rather than undermines, democratic values, pluralistic public debate, and users’ ability to express themselves freely and safely.

 See the full text of the study