NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics works to strengthen democracy by conducting rigorous research, advancing evidence-based public policy, and training the next generation of scholars.
Although there have only been a few AI-generated, viral lies about the upcoming presidential election, and they have been quickly debunked, there's far less information available on AI's role in state and local elections.
@csmap_nyu 's recently launched AI Political Archive aims to track the use of generative AI across all races in the 2024 US general election and better understand its impact on voting.
https://csmapnyu.org/impact/news/launching-the-ai-political-archive
Across platforms and media types, Kamala Harris memes have been taking over the internet. @zevesanderson spoke to @bloombergbusiness about how campaigns leverage social media and whether these strategies are effective in influencing voter turnout 🥥https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-25/kamala-harris-will-try-turning-coconut-and-brat-memes-into-votes?srnd=homepage-americas
MUST READ: CDT’s @mluria + Aliya Bhatia penned an op-ed for @CNN on how bills like #KOSA that allow for restriction & monitoring of children’s social media do more harm than good. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/opinions/social-media-monitoring-restriction-legislation-mediation-luria-bhatia/index.html
Classifying and moderating impermissible content is hard. Curtailing the ability of groups to mobilize is even harder. Social platforms should do everything they can to disrupt these groups and make it harder for extremists to organize violence.
https://www.wired.com/story/extremist-militias-are-coordinating-on-facebook/
@cbarrie will join the NYU Department of Sociology in Fall 2024 as an Assistant Professor. He is currently a Lecturer in Computational Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, where he founded the Social Data Science Hub.
Jenny will join the NYU Stern School of Business in Fall 2025 as an Assistant Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics. She is currently finishing her PhD in Marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management and will spend the 2024-25 academic year as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Computational Social Science Lab before joining NYU the following year.
📢 CSMaP is thrilled to announce that we’ve recruited two new core faculty members — Jennifer Allen & @cbarrie — to NYU to join the Center and advance our research agenda!
Together, Jenny & Chris will strengthen CSMaP’s expertise & increase our capacity to study critical issues at the intersection of digital media, politics, & policy.
Please join us in welcoming Jenny & Chris! 🥳 👏
https://csmapnyu.org/impact/news/jennifer-allen-and-christopher-barrie-to-join-csmap-and-nyu-faculty
Search engines are a cornerstone of the internet. But AI could transform how we find and engage with information online.
đź“… Join us 5/15 for a conversation with experts from Google, @theverge, and UNC's Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life about the evolution of search in the age of AI.
https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_adInl-GTTv-P2KM2rNyPnQ#/registration
A TikTok ban is about to pass the Senate. Can it withstand a First Amendment challenge? I spoke to three constitutional scholars, and everyone agreed the outcome is extremely hard to predict https://www.platformer.news/tiktok-ban-bill-senate-legal-challenge-first-amendment/
About half of adults get news regularly from social media, many of them on Meta's platforms. The company's decision to de-emphasize politics could further undermine news media (eliminating traffic & exposure they receive on social media) -- and deprive many Americans of information that enables their effective participation in democratic politics.
Is social media really to blame for society's most pressing issues? @j_a_tucker joined Vasant Dhar on Brave New World to reflect on what we've learned from conducting research at scale, and why it often challenges conventional wisdom https://bravenewpodcast.com/episodes/2024/04/18/episode-82-josh-tucker-on-the-complex-truth-about-social-media/
"More than Russian bots or click-hungry algorithms, a crisis of trust and legitimacy seems to lie behind the proliferation of paranoid falsehoods."
An excellent @NewYorker article about how misinformation is a symptom, not a cause, of our political dysfunction.
Introducing Rest of World’s 2024 AI elections tracker: Our continually updated database of how AI-generated text, images, and deepfakes are being used in political campaigns
https://restofworld.org/2024/elections-ai-tracker/?utm_source=mast
How we’re tracking the ways AI is being used to influence elections around the world
https://restofworld.org/2024/tracking-global-election-ai/?utm_source=mast
Thank you to Marisa Abrajano, Jonathan Nagler, Roberta Braga, Norberto Briceño, Evelyn PĂ©rez-VerdĂa, Laura Zommer, and Zeve Sanderson for joining the conversation!
Yesterday we were thrilled to bring together researchers, journalists, and advocacy groups to share lessons learned about addressing misinformation in Latino communities.
Here's video of the event if you missed the conversation:
Join us TODAY at 3pm ET for our event featuring:
➡️ New research on Latino online media habits & belief in misinformation
➡️ Discussion of the challenges our digital media ecosystem presents for engaging Latino communities in politics
Featuring speakers from the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, Factchequeado, Voto Latino, and We Are Más.
https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CsbLz4hoRNqmdpT-GRh1TA#/registration
On this week's The Media Show, @j_a_tucker joined the BBC to discuss how Trump has used Truth Social and X to drive news media attention.
AI chatbots could make it easier than ever for bad actors to flood local election officials with FOIA requests -- making it harder for them to ensure elections run smoothly and safely, Zeve Sanderson tells @WIRED.
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-chatbots-foia-requests-election-workers/
Following the presentation, Roberta Braga, Norberto Briceño, Evelyn PĂ©rez-VerdĂa, Laura Zommer, and Zeve Sanderson will discuss the challenges our current digital media ecosystem presents for understanding and engaging Latino communities in politics.
Hope to see you there!
