We’re hiring a postdoctoral researcher at CITAP, scheduled to begin July 1!
This position is intended to support a researcher who shares CITAP’s commitments to a holistic approach, analysis of social differences, prioritization of questions of power, institutions, and economic, social, cultural, and technological structures, and clear foundational commitments to equality and justice. Work aligned with any of our core areas – political processes, democracy and equality, mis- and disinformation, and platforms, networks, and infrastructure – is welcome.
The salary is not listed in the formal posting, but should be approximately $65-67,000.
Other questions? We’re happy to answer them:
Regulating election disinformation and voter suppression
The First Amendment Law Review and UNC’s Center for Media Law and Policy (CMLP) co-hosted an event on election speech and the First Amendment featuring a keynote from FEC commissioner Shana Broussard.
In a panel on regulating election speech, CITAP affiliate Evan Ringel summarized a recent research effort to compile state regulations of election-related speech and categorize states’ approaches to countering voter suppression messages and other forms of election disinformation.
“Laws can directly target the content of election-related speech in multiple ways. Some laws prohibit false and misleading factual statements about candidates for public office, while others prevent false statements about voting requirements or procedures. Several states have laws that prohibit a false statement of source or authorization for a political communication. Others have laws preventing false statements of endorsement or incumbency.”
This dataset of more than 125 state statutes is available on the CITAP Digital Politics site and could support future research into the these different regulatory approaches.
Recent publications and appearances
“There are lots of people who are in positions of power who are still using their platforms to spread electoral misinformation who have not been deplatformed.” Shannon McGregor joined Nandini Jammi and Shannon Bond to discuss deplatforming and its effectiveness in addressing disinformation on WFAE’s Charlotte Talks program.
“One sentence in her social media post jumped out at me immediately: “This is the truth you won’t hear from partisan media.” The hint of information asymmetry — where some shadowy figure is hiding a critical piece of information — is almost always a red flag.” Tressie McMillan Cottom continues to explore scam culture and citizen-consumership in The New York Times.
“I coined Zeynep’s Law recently, and it is the idea that, if you’re thinking some second-order effect, like, if you do this, counterintuitively, something will happen is going to overwhelm the benefit of the first-order effect. That’s almost always false. That was the idea that if you give people masks, they won’t wash their hands. Or if you give people masks, they’ll be more risky. It’s this idea of like, too clever. What if better is worse? Well, you know what? Better is almost never worse.” Zeynep Tufekci returned to the Ezra Klein Show to talk about Covid, public health, and when policy responses are too clever to be effective.
Coming soon
February 16: Johns Hopkins president Ron Daniels will discuss his book What Universities Owe Democracy at UNC’s Wilson Library. Registration and additional details to follow.
February 18: The call for papers is up for CITAP’s cosponsored ICA preconference What Comes After Disinformation Studies? The preconference will take place May 25, 2022 in Paris, France. Submissions due February 18.
Rest of Web
If you’ve missed West Elm Caleb’s moment of Internet infamy… you’re probably in luck. Dr. Jess Maddox of the University of Alabama flags this week’s TikTok villain as a target of morally-motivated networked harassment, citing Alice Marwick’s work.
Need weekend viewing? At least one student reported to Tressie McMillan Cottom that the latest episode of Abbott Elementary covered surveillance technologies and the organizational structures of schools and libraries covered in Daniel Greene’s The Promise of Access in sitcom format.