Prof Jeremy Pitt, of Imperial College London, was speaking yesterday at an Otago Business School seminar in Dunedin.
His talk asked ''How might we, whoever we are, better live our digital lives together?'' and explored ''Collective Action in the Digital Society''.
Prof Pitt said later the Australian Government had recently passed a new law that would target social media firms and clamp down on the circulation of content that broadcast violent crimes such as the Christchurch terrorist attack.
The European Union last month ordered Google to pay a $US1.7billion antitrust fine for ''abusive practices in online advertising''
Google was also fined $US5billion last year, and $US2.7billion in 2017 by the EU.
Prof Pitt said many members of the public were worried about privacy, and how their data was being used by social media firms.
If there was government ''push-back and there's grassroots concern'' and scientists could show there was a ''viable alternative'' to the big social media company platforms, real change could begin.
Prof Pitt also discussed a ''computational theory of collective action'', and a ''platform for grassroots empowerment''.
Government actions in Australia and the EU were ''an encouraging sign'' that they had not delegated power to ''non-transparent'' big social media firms, he said.
Prof Stephen Cranefield, of the University of Otago information science department, is the principal investigator on a $460,000 Marsden Fund research project on aspects of computer-related ''collective action''.
Prof Pitt is an associate investigator in the project, which the two researchers have discussed during the city visit.
