Earlier this week, CITAP launched the Bulletin of Technology and Public Life! Built on PubPub’s open-source platform, the Bulletin is an online library of research on mis- and disinformation, platforms, networks, infrastructure, and political processes.
We hope that the Bulletin can provide information for anyone interested in learning more about information, technology, and their impacts on public life. It is a home for work that may not fit in the format of an academic article and is designed to allow for much faster publishing timelines than a traditional journal.
The Bulletin is open-source and accessible to non-academic audiences, from experts to those just starting to delve into topics like misinformation, platform regulation, algorithms, search engines, and more. Timely research should be available to everyone navigating our ever-changing digital world. Broad access to these resources is especially important to understanding the impact of these platforms and power structures. We hope to help larger audiences explore questions of power, history, and culture and create a more informed public.
Special thanks to Alice Marwick, the Bulletin’s founding Editor-in-Chief, Elaine Schnabel, whose work as an editorial assistant made this launch possible, and Shannon McGregor.
We hope that you’ll give it a read:
Far-Right Online Radicalization
We’re celebrating the launch with a new piece by Alice Marwick, Benjamin Clancy, and Katherine Furl: Far-Right Online Radicalization: A Review of the Literature.
In her Twitter thread, Alice Marwick informs us how “a lot of publications coming out of ‘disinfo studies’ don’t include any model of radicalization. They just assume that ‘viewing extremist content’ = ‘adopting extremist beliefs.’ But as anyone in media/comms will tell you… that’s not how media effects work.”
After reviewing more than 200 sources, the researchers found:
Radicalization is an unclear concept
Widely accepted findings by radicalization researchers do not match popular meanings of radicalization
Radicalization is gradual
The internet does not cause radicalization, but it helps spread extremist ideas
“Radicalization” is not useful and is morally judgmental
Going forward, understanding this phenomenon calls for starting with much clearer definitions of what is and is not happening and more accurate terminology.
This work has been two years in the making with a very deep delve into radicalization literature. We’re proud to house such critical information, and look forward to adding more to our new Bulletin!
A moment of gratitude
Congratulations to Professor Zeynep Tufekci on her new appointment at Columbia Journalism School’s Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security.
During her time at the UNC School of Information and Library Science, Dr. Tufekci helped co-found CITAP. Through her involvement, CITAP has grown to become an innovative research hub, and we’ll continue to explore important questions of technology, people, and power among the community of researchers she helped create with Alice Marwick, Daniel Kreiss, and Deen Freelon.
We are proud of the research that Dr. Tufekci has led here at CITAP, and we look forward to following her future work.
Publications and appearances
“The implication is that in many cases, misinformation is left to fester on the very pages designed to provide the most accurate information to a geographically specific community about its local COVID context and mitigation strategies.” CITAP affiliate Nikki Usher released a policy briefing on local public health officials in rural Illinois and their use of Facebook as critical communication infrastructure.
“By funding work by in-state researchers and providing platforms liability protections for sharing research data, states can help us understand better the debates, types of content, and controversies that will populate online platforms in the wake of Roe’s reversal.” Center on Tech Policy’s Matt Perault wrote a new piece for Slate where he discusses the coming online content war and the steps states might take to regulate it.
CITAP postdoctoral researcher Meredith Pruden took to Twitter to announce she’s joining the School of Communication & Media at Kennesaw State as an assistant professor in the fall. We’re grateful for the research she’s led and collaborated on with us here at CITAP and excited to see what comes next. Congratulations Meredith!
Zeynep Tufekci received two recognitions for her research and public scholarship this week. One of them is an honorary degree from Brown University and a finalist citation for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary.
Coming soon
May 17: Francesca Tripodi’s talk hosted by NASIG titled “Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia” will begin at 2:00 pm. Full event details and registration are available on NASIG’s site.
May 20: CITAP affiliate applications due!
May 26-30: The 72nd annual International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Paris, France. Many of our CITAP folks will be there, so if anyone wants to meet with us while there, do reach out!
Rest of Web
Investigative journalism group, Bellingcat, announced the launch of the Bellingcat TikTok Analysis Tool which allows researchers to collect and analyze TikTok posts and hashtags.