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News on Algorithms and Automation
Election interference raises grave normative concerns. Unfortunately, due to conceptual and methodological challenges, little scientific knowledge has been generated about election interference. This talk discusses the mechanisms by which election interference occurred and the extent to which it influenced the electorate. The talk presents Kim’s research on covert digital campaigns by unidentifiable, unattributable groups ahead […]
A pink slime has been spreading across America. At last count, it has infested more than 1,200 sites. Pink-slime news sites, that is. The name comes from being the journalistic equivalent of the beef industry’s byproduct called pink slime, a.k.a., Lean, Finely Textured Beef, used as filler in frozen and fast foods. Don’t be fooled […]
By Barrett GoldingThe ideal scenario for the modern propagandist, of course, is to have convincing personas produce original content. Generative text is the next frontier. Released in a beta version in June by the artificial-intelligence research lab OpenAI, a tool called GPT-3 generates long-form articles as effortlessly as it composes tweets, and its output is often difficult […]
By Renée DiRestaAutomated devices permeate our lives, from our toasters to Siri. The promise has been that automation and algorithms will make our lives simpler, and help us find the things we want in an increasingly connected world. But we now realize that on social media platforms, algorithms and automation can be used to spread disinformation further and faster.
While social media make it easy to connect with and access information from anyone, they also facilitate basic influence and unfriending mechanisms that may lead to segregated and polarized clusters known as “echo chambers.” Here we study the conditions in which such echo chambers emerge by introducing a simple model of information sharing in online […]
By Kazutoshi Sasahara, Wen Chen, Hao Peng, Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Alessandro Flammini, and Filippo Menczer Climate-intensified wildfires that changed the lived reality of a large majority of Australians in horrific and unforgettable ways triggered an unprecedented immune response to deny reality and a chance at serious climate change. American conservatives have been mostly silent on the wildfires so far, but the Australian experience suggests there’s a risk of misinformation flaring […]
By Ketan JoshiThe idea of algorithmic manipulation schemes brainwashing large swaths of the US electorate online is a nice way to explain the polarized nature of American public opinion. But experts say it’s actually pretty unlikely that targeted political advertising has had much influence on voter behavior at all. […] Source: Why Facebook’s political-ad ban is taking […]
By Author on SourceOver the last five years, widespread concern about the effects of social media on democracy has led to an explosion in research from different disciplines and corners of academia. This book is the first of its kind to take stock of this emerging multi-disciplinary field by synthesizing what we know, identifying what we do not […]
By Nathaniel Persily and Joshua TuckerOnline Social Networks and Media have revolutionized society, and are now a key part of how most people work, live, socialize, find information and entertain themselves. But whilst they have generated huge benefits, leading to unprecedented connectivity across the globe, online social networks have also enabled the spread of hazardous and dangerous behaviours. Such ‘online […]
By ElsevierAs a threat analyst/researcher on our Trust & Safety team you will work alongside multiple teams to bring and action on analysis of platform threats. You will work cross-functionally with product managers, program managers, operations, policy, and communications teams; to find gaps in current threat response processes such as detection and mitigation. You will be […]
By ByteDancePlease join Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics to discuss our recently released book on Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform, during a half-day symposium on September 8th from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. pacific time. […]