Who gets to be influential, and at what cost? Over the past two decades, public attention spans and approaches to “truth” have undergone significant transformation: from legacy media to short-form video, credentialed expertise to projected authenticity, and, increasingly, from human influencers to AI-generated ones. 

In this research review, communications scholar Julia Jeonghyun Parke provides a detailed look into social media influencers as voices of authority in the public sphere – how success is shaped by algorithms and social hierarchies, and where new frameworks are needed to understand one of the biggest shifts in our contemporary media landscape.

For his second video essay in MediaWell’s series on transnational digital governance, law and technology expert Dr. Ivar Hartmann (Insper, Brazil) highlights key issues for U.S. media and civil society – at a time when many countries, especially across the Global South, are looking elsewhere for regulatory inspiration. 

This essay explores some of these rising models of global tech policy: the influence of EU-style AI regulation, the role that procedural rights can play in content moderation, and possibilities for improving the digital public sphere.

As part of MediaWell’s video essay series on transnational digital governance, law and technology expert Ivar Hartmann (Insper, Brazil) outlines some of the topics dominating the field’s attention – and those that aren’t, but should. 

Where generative AI and the downstream effects of geopolitical conflict have captured much of the conversation in research and policy circles, this essay calls for a collective focus shift towards issues with at least as much impact – if not more – on our everyday lives, like platform work, content recommendation algorithms, and “outside-the-box” attempts to regulate Big Tech.

As part of MediaWell’s video essay series on transnational digital governance, researcher Robert Gorwa describes the issues and challenges that he thinks will define the next five years — and how the models of governance that drive them are in flux.

This essay explores the rise of what Gorwa calls “informal digital governance institutions.” While transnational cooperation on digital policy has increasingly given way to confrontation over the last year, these institutions — mostly comprised of technology firms, often with civil society and sometimes government involvement — have taken on a central role, developing the standards and infrastructure to address key issues.

According to the Pew Research Center, at least half of U.S. adults rely on social media for information about current events. But what happens when they leave those platforms behind?

In this interview, media scholar Margaret Yee Man Ng explores the phenomenon of “social media stampedes” — cases of mass user exodus from a specific platform, often in response to sudden or controversial policy changes. Drawing on her own research, Dr. Ng discusses previous stampedes, the (un)successful migration to alternative sites, and the long-term implications for trusted digital information networks.