We’re now accepting applications for accepting applications for both faculty and graduate student affiliates for the 2021-2022 academic year. Affiliates can come from a broad range of academic and research institutions, especially in North Carolina. We invite applications from people working on issues related to CITAP, broadly focused on the intersection of technology and media, platforms, misinformation, political institutions, identity, race, culture, and journalism.
An affiliate membership with CITAP offers:
Invitations to participate in CITAP events, including biweekly research workshops and professional development talks
Access to a members-only discussion forum
A listing on the CITAP website
A diverse network of peers and mentors
Opportunities to collaborate with other researchers
Read the full call and the VERY SIMPLE application instructions.
If you know someone who’d be a great fit for our community, please pass this along!
Recent publications and appearances
"The social media companies have taken a hard line against disinformation; they have not taken a similarly hard line against fallacies." Deen Freelon was quoted in NPR story about the insidious nature of gray-area misinformation—when factual information is packaged with commentary and subtext meant to further false ideas.
Francesca Tripodi appeared as a panelist for “Truth & Denial: Searching for Information in the Digital Era” as part of UC Berkeley’s Matrix on Point discussion series.
Zeynep Tufekci explains how facts are only pieces of the puzzle, and why contextualizing them correctly is what gives them meaning.
Coming soon
On April 24, Rachel Kuo will lead an Asian-American Feminist Media Making Workshop for the NYC Asian American Student Conference.
Rachel Kuo is co-facilitating an Ethical and Effective Public Scholarship workshop on April 30, as part of Boston College’s conference on Building the Fugitive Academy: Communication, Culture, Media, & Rhetoric Scholars on the Work of Transformation.
On May 3, Deen Freelon will discuss “A Deepening Crisis: The Role of ‘Digital Surrogate Organizations’ in Conservative Parties” as part of the Conservative Dilemma conference hosted by George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics and the Social Science Research Council’s Media & Democracy program.
Francesca Tripodi will talk “Misinformation, Disinformation, and Media Literacy in a Less-Centralized Social Media Universe” on Tuesday, May 11 as part of the Reimagine the Internet conference from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
On May 12, the new UNC AI Decision-Making Research Program (AI-DR) will host a conversation with founding director Ifeoma Ajunwa and Kate Crawford.
Rest of Web
The Nieman Lab discusses the importance of journalistic skepticism, and how it often isn’t applied to police narratives.
On May 4, our friends at the Asian American Feminist Collective are hosting “Imagining Cop-Free Communities in NYC,” a teach-in on abolitionist organizing and responses to anti-Asian violence.
CITAP researchers highlighted a new BuzzFeed piece about how Facebook’s own internal task force documented how Stop the Steal groups used the platform to incite the Capitol insurrection:
Daniel Kreiss pushed back on the framing of a New York Times article about political sectarianism as a threat to U.S. democracy:
“Studying social media from the perspective of the people who use it is also important because they are conspicuously absent from public debates about social media and political tribalism.” Chris Bail, director of the Duke Polarization Lab, is launching a new book about profound differences between people’s online and real-life personas, and what that means for platforms and polarization.
And just in time for Indie Bookstore Day, Tressie McMillan Cottom shares her most memorable reads with Elle magazine’s Shelf Life. (If you’re looking for a way to celebrate the holiday, may we recommend our neighbors at Epilogue Books?)