Earlier this week, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public announced CITAP Senior Faculty Researcher Francesca Tripodi as the winner of their 2023 CIP Award for Impact & Excellence.
The award recognizes Tripodi’s research contributions to strengthening democracy against disinformation, including an ethnographic approach of media immersion that allows her to embed herself fully into her respondents’ information ecosystem and her theoretical work on how our worldviews and “deep stories” shape how we seek information.
The award citation also notes her public scholarship and engagement, including giving testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of a 2019 hearing, “Stifling Free Speech: Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse.”
Selection committee member Jonathan Corpus Ong highlighted:
“The Propagandists’ Playbook is a pathbreaking title inspiring a whole generation of researchers across communication, sociology, and information science make sense of how conservatives’ social anxieties and cultural resentments find new expression and affirmation in online communities. The book’s retelling of conservative voters’ ‘deep stories’ are at times difficult to read, but essential to grapple with as we work towards a shared political future.”
Tripodi will visit UW this fall to give a talk based on her work. We’re grateful to our friends at UW CIP for their leadership in identifying and recognizing impactful research!
And if you haven’t yet read The Propagandists’ Playbook, the audiobook (read by the author) is discounted through July 3!
Publications and appearances
“We do not need new theories of publics so much as to recover comparatively older and more critical emphases on analyzing historical forces and social structures in empirical work on communicative dynamics in media systems. This would enable scholars using theories of the public sphere to study groups that make claims of marginalization or enact communicative styles outside the rules of politesse in liberal democracies to better center power in their analyses. We do so through a discussion of the varied ways scholars wield the concept of counterpublics across research traditions.” Sarah J Jackson and Daniel Kreiss consider the role of power in defining the public sphere and counterpublics, (open access) proposing that “defensive” publics is a more accurate term for right-wing movements.
“Like every story about enslavement and the American West, you cannot talk about Juneteenth in Portland without talking about land.” Tressie McMillan Cottom attends the Eight Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo (gift link) for the New York Times.
“There is nothing simple or straightforward about determining the age of internet users. There are many methods—from submitting government IDs to AI-based facial age estimation—and every one of them has tradeoffs.” Scott Babwah Brennan and Matt Perault co-author a whitepaper on age verification regulation and keeping kids safe online (open access).
Coming soon
June 29 at the Capitol Visitors Center: Scott Babwah Brennan joins a panel on age verification laws and their potential impact on privacy, free speech, and the online safety of minors. Registration is free.
October 16 at CITAP: Misinformation and Marginalization Symposium. Extended abstracts due June 30!
October 18 at AoIR: Alice Marwick, Yvonne Eadon, and Rachel Kuo are among the co-organizers of an AoIR preconference on future of conspiracy.
October 22 at the Annenberg Public Policy Center: The Post-API Conference. Proposals due July 17.