The Brain Trust Initiative is a vision to unleash the power of digital media as a force for change across sub-saharan Africa. Abstract: Media in sub-Saharan Africa is at a crossroads. Journalism as a change agent within sub-Saharan Africa has lagged, due primarily to the lack of commercially vibrant media and editorially independent media institutions. […]
The Brain Trust Initiative Read More »
Will Stevens is Director of the Public Diplomacy Division at the Foreign Service Institute. He spoke about “Adversarial Narratives” and their use by states, non-state actors, and domestic political parties. He also discussed his work training U.S. diplomats to represent the United States in challenging times, American influence around the world, and how public diplomacy
Misinformation Speaker Series: Will Stevens Read More »
Shorenstein Center Pozen Fellow Dipayan Ghosh, an expert in data privacy and digital platforms, and Jim Steyer, founder and chief executive of Common Sense Media, which advocates for improving media and entertainment for families, authored an op-ed published today in the New York Times. They argue that technology companies have been given nearly free rein
NYT Opinions: Kids Shouldn’t Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education Read More »
Takis Metaxas is a Professor of Computer Science at Wellesley College, studying online social media, primarily related to the propagation of information and misinformation, prediction of political events, and in developing tools that help users evaluate the trustworthiness of information. In particular, with his Wellesley colleagues and students, he has been studying the problem of
Takis Metaxas: Online Manipulation of U.S. Elections Read More »
It would be ludicrous if it wasn’t so malicious: Fringe websites and social media users dismissed the migrant families who got caught up in skirmishes at the U.S.-Mexican border as “paid crisis actors” taking part in a staged hoax. That phrase is a dog-whistle reference to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where
Digital Border Battles Read More »
Takis Metaxas is a Professor of Computer Science at Wellesley College, studying online social media, primarily related to the propagation of information and misinformation, prediction of political events, and in developing tools that help users evaluate the trustworthiness of information. In particular, with his Wellesley colleagues and students, he has been studying the problem of
Takis Metaxas: Online Manipulation of U.S. Elections Read More »
Shorenstein Center Pozen Fellow Dipayan Ghosh was on MSNBC with Ali Velshi on Thanksgiving Day, talking about Facebook and tech platform regulation. Dipayan is a lead research fellow on the Shorenstein Center’s Platform Accountability Project, where he has published papers on data privacy, algorithms, and platform regulation policy. Formerly he worked on tech policy at
Dipayan Ghosh on MSNBC Read More »
Disinformation narratives emerged across multiple platforms and websites as the Camp Fire and Woolsey Fire made their respective ways across part of California this week. While the mainstream media covered how to help victims, the celebrities who had lost homes, the size of the fires and the causes of the fires, the disinformation themes that spread
Wildfires trigger conspiracy theories Read More »
Much of the election-related online disinformation we’ve monitored since the midterms has attacked specific candidates or election officials and promoted groundless claims of fraud in ways that may further weaken public trust in the electoral process itself. Tactics identified by the Information Disorder Lab include unfounded accusations of vote-stealing, machine tampering, finding votes, unspecified fraud
Midterm redux: a post-election scan from the Information Disorder Lab Read More »
Much of the election-related online disinformation we’ve monitored since the midterms has attacked specific candidates or election officials and promoted groundless claims of fraud in ways that may further weaken public trust in the electoral process itself. Tactics identified by the Information Disorder Lab include unfounded accusations of vote-stealing, machine tampering, finding votes, unspecified fraud
Midterm redux: a post-election scan from the Information Disorder Lab Read More »
The 2018 Midterm Elections were historic in the number of women and people of color elected to congress. They were also notable for the changes in how people voted, who voted, and what that says about the future of U.S. politics and the sate of the media in this country. Below is a roundup of
2018 Midterms: Reactions Roundup Read More »
The Information Disorder Update: November 5, 2018 Amid warnings of a looming civil war and an immigrant “invasion” from Central America, the 2018 midterm campaign has thrived on hyperbole and misinformation that have become weapons in an online battlefield. In this digital warfare, the angriest, most extreme voices have dominated the political arena. Finally, on
Midterms 2018: Trends in Information Disorder Read More »
The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is a Harvard Kennedy School research center dedicated to exploring and illuminating the intersection of press, politics and public policy in theory and practice. The Center strives to bridge the gap between journalists and scholars, and between them and the public.
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