Tenure, Democracy, and Satire: Summer Updates from CITAP

Dr. Francesca Tripodi receives tenure (yay!), is American democracy a lost cause? (boo!), and an analysis of conservative satire using Babylon Bee as a case study.

Celebrating Francesca Tripodi

CITAP Principal Investigator, Francesca Tripodi, received tenure at the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), being promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor. We could not be more excited for Francesca achieving this milestone. 

Casey Fletcher, the communication coordinator at the SILS, summarized and discussed Francesca’s accomplishments thus far in her career in a SILS news piece: 

“Francesca Tripodi is a sociologist and information scholar whose research examines the relationship between search engines, participatory platforms, politics, and society. She is a Principal Investigator at the Center for Information Technology and Public Life (CITAP) at UNC-Chapel Hill and an affiliate (former postdoctoral scholar) at Data & Society Research Institute. She has twice testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (April 10, 2019 and July 16, 2019), to explain how relevance is gamed to drive ideologically based queries and spread conspiratorial logic.  In addition to her research on search engines, Dr. Tripodi’s work documents how race and gender impact perceived notability – highlighting that cis-gender women are nearly twice as likely to be considered non-notable subjects than their cis-male peers. Along with her Co-PIs at MIT and Stanford, Dr. Tripodi received a National Science Foundation Accelerator Award in 2021 to study how people find information and build tools to enhance and enable search literacy. 

Tripodi’s research is frequently captured by the mainstream press.  In December 2023, Dr. Tripodi was a featured guest on an episode of Meet the Pressto discuss the dangers of online education tools like PragerU. Her work has also been highlighted on All Things Considered (NPR), the Financial Times, the Associated Press, and is the subject of her own contributions to Wired, Slate, and The Chronical of Higher Education.  In addition to these featured segments, Dr. Tripodi’s research is regularly cited by esteemed publications like The Washington Post, The New York Times, TIME, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, and The Neiman Journalism Lab. In recognition of her impact, Dr. Tripodi received the Award for Impact and Excellence in 2023 from the Center for the Informed Public at the University of Washington.” 

🎉 Please join us in congratulating and celebrating Francesca for this well-deserved career milestone! 🎉

Welcoming Anna Beers 

Advertised earlier this year, CITAP listed a new postdoctoral fellow position working with Francesca in the Search Prompt Integrity & Learning Lab (SPILL). SPILL will track the impact of data voids across platforms to mitigate their spillover effects. The team’s first objective will be to develop a system for detecting data voids proactively using edit history data from Wikipedia. Anna Beers, who recently completed her Phd in Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, is joining CITAP as our new SPILL Postdoc. 

Dr. Anna Beers studies the activities of political online communities and particularly the social media influencers that act within them. While she focuses on quantitative methods and particularly network science, her work is informed by ethnographic work on online communities and influencers derived from media and cultural studies. She concerns herself primarily with pressing problems in political communication in the United States, particularly related to public concern around disinformation, radicalization, and far-right mobilization. Her prior and ongoing work has focused on United States elections, pseudo-scientific content relating to COVID-19, international information operations, and anti-transgender organizing. 

Francesca, who will be working closely with Dr. Beers on the SPILL team, is excited that Anna is joining the team: 

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Beers to CITAP. Her research and impactful aligns with our center's vision and her extensive knowledge of Wikipedia will enrich our scope. In particular, her computational skills will be an invaluable asset as we launch the Search Prompt Integrity and Learning Lab (SPILL) in the coming year.

The Fragility of American Democracy 

Tressie McMillan Cottom discussed the state of American democracy in her most recent New York Times op-ed (gift link). 

Not only was the presidential debate abysmal, embarrassing, and nightmare-fuel (among many other adjectives), but the SCOTUS decision that followed shortly after only added to the disillusionment of many Americans. Many Americans have maintained an enduring faith in the stability and longevity of “American Democracy”—a quiet and not-so-quiet confidence that it will always self-correct. If you take a wrong turn, the GPS will always re-route. But, what if the final destination itself has been changed? 

But Greece is a testament to what happens when we think ideas are so taken for granted that they do not need defending... Americans continue to insist that Jan. 6 was an anomaly, but we are naïve about the strength of our institutions. Too many of us, academics and laypeople alike, rely too heavily on historical precedent to safeguard our electoral present. What a nation like Greece shows is that Jan. 6 is an anomaly only once before it becomes routine.

Americans are relying on precedent to save the present. But, when the people in power don’t care about precedent, but rather maintaining and securing their own power, Americans have ultimately relied on a fragile idea to maintain democracy.   

The threat to democracy that Tressie identifies and discusses is not the lack of a good candidate for the Democratic Party, but rather the power grab by the Republican Party that has been happening for decades, in plain sight.  

The Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity is a harbinger of not just the court’s growing power but of Democrats’ inability to mount a populist defense... Their decisions are not only codifying minority interests; they are a show of strength for a Republican Party that has no intention of ever ceding power to majority will again.

What is “Conservative Satire”?

And why is it not funny? In a new paper by Parker Bach, former CITAP GRA and current Research Assistant at Microsoft’s Social Media Collective, Bach delves into how The Babylon Bee has uniquely adapted 21st-century U.S. news satire to fit a conservative viewpoint. Unlike traditional liberal-dominated satire, The Babylon Bee addresses contemporary political issues such as Donald Trump, misinformation, and identity politics, often incorporating and playing into popular right-wing conspiracy theories. By doing so, The Bee has successfully merged elements of satire, news parody, and conservative critique, achieving notable popularity and financial success. This reflects a broader trend where conservative media, from online memes to mainstream shows like Gutfeld!, have begun to dominate the satirical landscape, challenging the longstanding liberal stronghold on this genre. 

Bach's research also highlights the conservative critique of Big Tech, exemplified by The Bee’s frequent jabs at alleged censorship by platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This aligns with a broader narrative among American conservatives who believe that these platforms suppress their viewpoints. The Bee’s focus on "fighting censorship" has become a key part of its brand and business strategy, urging readers to subscribe to support "free speech." In “Fake news you can trust”: How The Babylon Bee brings news satire to the Right", Bach suggests that scholars of political humor must broaden their scope beyond the liberal-dominated era of news satire to fully understand the evolving landscape of conservative satire, with The Babylon Bee serving as a critical example.