“COVID-19 is having a profound impact on our online systems – exposing both the essential role they can and do play in our modern society, and the risks and vulnerabilities they represent. Substantial research is emerging on this topic, and the implications of that research will have important consequences for both medium (e.g., 2020 elections) […]
“COVID-19 has exposed the susceptibility of our democratic processes to digital shortcomings, including increasing uncertainty around the ability to carry out free, fair, and safe elections in 2020 as well as the already present challenges of a high tech census. Across the country, advocates and campaigns are also facing a new reality as community education, […]
“EJ Dionne, Washington Post columnist and political commentator; Janet Hook, staff writer at The Los Angeles Times; and Ronald Brownstein, senior editor at The Atlantic, discuss implications of the novel coronavirus for the 2020 elections. Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty moderates the panel. Register for this free virtual Kennedy Library Forum to receive an email reminder with a viewing link before the event.”
“Kate Starbird and her team will be speaking about a new project that looks at how scientific findings and science credentials are mobilized in the spread of misinformation. Additional information, including Zoom RSVP link, to be posted soon.”
“Join us online for a talk with André Brock, author of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures, in conversation with Data & Society’s Director of Research Sareeta Amrute as part of Data & Society’s classic Databite series. Brock’s book asks where Blackness manifests in the ideology of Western technoculture. Using critical technocultural discourse analysis (Brock, 2018), Afro-optimism, […]
“On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order threatening to revoke CDA 230 protections, which would expose social media companies to increased liability for content that is posted on their sites. This comes on the heels of Twitter, last week, fact-checking two misleading tweets from the president about mail-in voting. Critics of the executive order […]
“On Twitter and Facebook, hundreds of posts are circulating saying that George Floyd is not actually dead. Conspiracy theorists are baselessly arguing that George Soros, the billionaire investor and Democratic donor, is funding the spreading protests against police brutality. And conservative commentators are asserting with little evidence that antifa, the far-left antifascism activist movement, coordinated the riots and […]
“Naomi Klein and LLana James lay out the epic stakes of the growing struggles around data, technology, AI and COVID-19. Power, race(ism), and money shape every development related to big tech: who owns it, how and why it gets used. What do we need to consider during the pandemic if privacy, human rights and universal […]
“The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) is a forum for researchers from multiple disciplines to come together to share knowledge, discuss ideas, exchange information, and learn about cutting-edge research in diverse fields with the common theme of online social media. This overall theme includes research in new perspectives in social theories, […]
“While disinformation is not new to politics, today’s technologies enable political actors to manipulate the information ecosystem at scale and with great speed. Through massive networks of fake accounts, junk news sites, and the strategic use of conspiracy theories, half-truths, and falsehoods, authoritarian regimes and others are suffocating and dividing the public square. In the […]