CITAP welcomed our 2023-2024 affiliate cohort this week! We couldn’t be more excited about welcoming the largest group of affiliates thus far (185!), or about the diverse group and variety of talents that are joining our affiliate team.
Affiliates include graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and professionals working on these topics in nonprofits, think tanks, and other organizations. This year’s cohort brings together institutions spanning the Research Triangle and the globe, from Chapel Hill and Durham to Israel, Germany, Iran, India, South Africa, and Turkey, to name just a few.
They're experts in mis- and disinformation, digital (in)equality/justice/equity, ethical technology, media and communication, AI, and journalism (among many other topics). The group brings together philosophers, sociologists, legal scholars, historians, information scientists, linguists. And we're unified by a common commitment to producing research that's concerned with how social difference shapes unequal experiences on information platforms and committed to advancing justice and equality.
In addition to these talented new and returning affiliates, we’re also welcoming their “fluffiliates” who provide us all much-needed entertainment and stress relief.
Over the course of the coming academic year, the affiliates will gather for research workshops, topical working groups, professional development conversations, speakers and symposia, and informal collaboration both virtual and in-person. We'll be sharing their work here as well, so there’s lots to look forward to.
Also, hi everyone! I am Felicity. Katy introduced me as the new CITAP Admin Associate a few weeks ago, and you’ll be seeing more newsletters and communications from me. I have been putting together the affiliate pages, bios, etc. for the past few weeks now and I have loved getting to (digitally) know everyone!
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Congratulations to Alice Marwick on being invited as the Microsoft Visiting Professor at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy for 2023-24! We’re deeply excited to build closer ties with our neighbors at CITP and the excellent visiting community they’ll be hosting.
Publications and appearances
“People are social beings and they talk about each other, and they do that in person as well as online. So even if you never post a photo on Facebook, it's very likely that some of your friends or family have, or that you may have appeared in the background of a photo, or something like that. Now that we have complex facial recognition technologies, those photos can be identified even if they aren't posted by somebody who's tagged you. So the idea of networked privacy is that data is connected through social technologies and big data technologies and that removes our individual control over information.” Alice Marwick discussed her book The Private is Political with Jake Chanenson on the New Books in Public Policy Podcast.
“It’s very important to recognize that these are not educational videos. These videos are very explicitly created to get people to think a certain way... And the goal of PragerU is to advance a conservative agenda.” Francesca Tripodi talked to TIME about Florida promoting PragerU content in schools.
“Many controversies in the early era of social media grew out of the assumption that users had a singular, coherent identity across platforms. The researchers danah boyd and Alice Marwick described the resulting discord as “context collapse”: Users invited criticism by speaking offhandedly, as if in a private room, before potentially limitless audiences on Twitter or Facebook.” The Atlantic discusses the fragmented world of social media after Twitter.
“It’s tricky to track the impact of trends like this, especially when the trend involves ingesting a substance that is typically thought of as toxic, it’s unclear how many people who show interest online will actually perform the behavior offline. People may be more inclined to try drinking borax if they can post about it online and go viral, but similarly the everyday non-posting user watching the video may see it as a trend fit only for (wannabe) influencers.” Affiliate Rachel Moran talks to Vox about the TikTok Borax challenge.
“There are a lot of conservatives — men but some women too — in this country who increasingly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, while liberals run things. Trump invites those people to feel victimized and then says, ‘I will fix the problem.’” Affiliate Paul Elliott Johnson spoke to 538 about masculinity, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party.
Coming soon
August 30 at APSA: CITAP is cohosting the APSA Pre-Conference in Political Communication: The Age of Misinformation.
October 16 at CITAP: Misinformation and Marginalization Symposium. Registration information coming soon!
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.