Nov 19, 2020 | Arts & Culture, Politics & Society
By Peter Geoghegan Social media platforms have allowed US conservatives to delegitimise the election and sow mistrust of democracy. In late August, roughly five weeks before Americans went to the polls, a story appeared in The New York Times reporting new data about...
Aug 18, 2020 | Politics & Society
Social media has become a key feature in politics and communication and will likely play a significant role in the 2020 US election. The Trump administration has threatened sanctions against social media sites TikTok and WeChat, a move which...
Jul 28, 2020 | Politics & Society, Referee
By Rachel Simpson The crisis of lawlessness on Facebook means it has become a breeding ground for alienation, fragmentation and xenophobia across the globe. In a contribution to the North Carolina Law Review, Georgetown Law Professor Anupam Chander, commented on the...
Apr 23, 2020 | Arts & Culture, Politics & Society
By Tobias R. Keller & Rosalie Gillett Even before the coronavirus arrived to turn life upside down and trigger a global infodemic, social media platforms were under growing pressure to curb the spread of misinformation. Last year, Facebook cofounder and chief...
Nov 4, 2019 | Arts & Culture, Politics & Society
Last week, Twitter announced it would ban all political advertising from the 22nd of November. Founder Jack Dorsey says that political reach should be earned, not bought. The announcement came as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill about...
Jun 26, 2019 | Arts & Culture, Politics & Society
We asked three academics to address the question of whether social media is democratising or eroding democracy. Great democratic potential It’s tempting to dodge this question by arguing technologies don’t determine our politics, or equivocating with a...
Dec 6, 2018 | Arts & Culture, Politics & Society
By Heather Wood & Leslie Hahner Heather Woods and Leslie Hahner discuss how mainstream media helps to weaponize far-right conspiracy theories. Once an anti-Semitic rumor moved from fringe to the mainstream, it took less than two weeks for violence to erupt. The...
Nov 13, 2018 | Politics & Society
By Tauhid Zaman Even a few bots can shift public opinion in big ways, according to new research from Tauhid Zaman. Nearly two-thirds of the social media bots with political activity on Twitter before the 2016 U.S. presidential election supported Donald Trump. But all...
Sep 19, 2018 | Politics & Society
By Daniel P. Aldrich Natural disasters are becoming more common due to climate change, and it could be social networks that save lives when they do. Soon after my family moved to New Orleans in the summer of 2005, we heard Mayor Ray Nagin’s first warnings about...
Aug 23, 2018 | Politics & Society, Referee
By Pamela Williamson Pamela Williamson looks into the world of Russian trolls and bots. The mechanisation of bots to power political messaging is a very new phenomenon, although propaganda during war has been around for a long time. The seminal work of Harold Laswell...