Does social media use have a positive or negative impact on civic engagement? The cynical “slacktivism hypothesis” holds that if citizens use social media for political conversation, those conversations will be fleeting and vapid. Most attempts to answer this question involve public opinion data from the United States, so we […]
(This originally appeared as Facebook and Twitter’s real sin goes beyond spreading fake news.) Social media companies are taking heat for influencing the outcomes of the U.S. presidential election and Brexit referendum by allowing fake news, misinformation campaigns and hate speech to spread. But Facebook and Twitter’s real sin was […]
Our research was featured in this New York Times article on the U.S. Election and bots. SAN FRANCISCO — An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published […]
This essay appeared originally in July issue of the Journal of Democracy and is by Daniel O’Maley. What does the Internet mean for political systems, and for human freedom? During the 1990s and early 2000s, many social scientists equated the Internet’s spread with the supposed triumph of liberal democracy. Today, however, […]
