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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is a Harvard University research center dedicated to exploring and illuminating the intersection of press, politics and public policy in theory and practice. It is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

https://shorensteincenter.org/

Commercial Content Moderation during the Pandemic

Fri, May 8, 2020

In this week’s episode of BIG, If True, our host Joan Donovan, PhD asks: should we trust our search engines? Have joint industry efforts – led by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn – to limit misinformation been successful? How are new content policies specific to COVID-19 being enforced? And if so, at what cost? As we clumsily shift our lives online, the cracks in the information infrastructure are bursting open. While there’s been an uptick in boosting trusted content by credible sources, like the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, there has simultaneously been sweeping purges of advertisements seeking to capitalize on the crisis and suspicious accounts, leaving us to wonder who’s heard and who’s harmed in the current infodemic. Amidst this sliding scale of uncertainty, we turn to leading voices in the field, UCLA professors Safiya Umoja Noble, PhD and Sarah T. Roberts, PhD and Washington Post Reporter, Elizabeth Dwoskin, who have been taking stock of how commercial content is being moderated during the pandemic. Registration for this event is required, details on how to join the webinar will be sent to registered participants before the event. Register [here.](http://https://forms.shorensteincenter.org/view.php?id=128809) Image courtesy of Pixabay

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Big, If True Series On Tech & The Pandemic

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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Big, If True Webinar: Technologies of the Far-Right

Fri, May 1, 2020

Recently, Luke O’Brien, a reporter at HuffPost, covered the controversy surrounding Clearview AI, a company that has amassed a large database of images and social media data of private citizens. His reporting also illustrated how right-wing activism shaped the design of the technology and flouted platforms’ terms of service in pursuit of big data. Luke joins the Shorenstein Center's director of research, Joan Donovan, and Biella Coleman, an anthropologist of hackers, who has studied how technopolitics can influence law and change society. They talk about how the “alt-right” developed, how they spread their ideas and what responses are necessary to prevent this from reoccurring. ## EXTRA RESOURCES [Luke O'Brien's reporting on Clearview AI and far right extremism](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-alt-right_n_5e7d028bc5b6cb08a92a5c48?6p8) Whitney Phillips' book "[You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polluted Information](A Field Guide for Navigating Polluted Information) " Joan Donovan's [MIT Tech Review article](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/30/1000881/covid-hoaxes-zombie-content-wayback-machine-disinformation/) on how covid conspiracy theorists are using tech to keep conspiracy theories alive. Image courtesy of Flickr

Forum Network

Big, If True Series On Tech & The Pandemic

Partner:

Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Two Truths and a Lie: Misinformation and Public Health

Fri, Apr 24, 2020

What do public health advocates need to know about misinformation research? Like our hospitals, our information systems are completely overwhelmed with questions, ranging from the banal, “How do I know if I have coronavirus?,” “Where can I get tested for COVID-19?,” “Is there a vaccine?” to the conspiracy-driven, “Does 5G affect your health?” or “What is the World Health Organization and do they work for China?” The list goes on, but the fact remains: people are seeking more and more information about COVID-19 and wrong answers could be deadly. Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute talks with Setti Warren, Executive Director of the Shorenstein Center and former Mayor of Newton MA. The two discuss what public health advocates need to know about misinformation and how misinformation influence people’s behaviors. They . cover the ways local governments communicate to residents and how public health professionals and local officials can work together to share life-saving recommendations during the infodemic. This talk is part of the [_Big, If True_](https://forum-network.org/series/big-if-true-series-tech-pandemic/) webinar series hosted by Joan Donovan, Ph.D., who heads up the [**Technology and Social Change Research Project** (TaSC)](https://shorensteincenter.org/about-us/areas-of-focus/technology-social-change/) at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

Forum Network

Big, If True Series On Tech & The Pandemic

Partner:

Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Race, Xenophobia, and COVID-19

Fri, Apr 17, 2020

Explore how COVID-19 has exacerbated existing inequalities, fueled xenophobia, and harmed marginalized groups. How can policymakers, civil society, and media mitigate against discrimination by shining a light on health disparities? What does xenophobia look like in a time of social distancing? How has misinformation and disinformation inflamed these divides? And what can journalists do to surface these tensions without compounding the problem? COVID-19 won’t be the last global crisis, but how we respond to these questions may make all the difference. ProPublica reporters, Akilah Johnson and Talia Buford, who are covering the data on health outcomes across communities of color, Marita Etcubañezs, Director of Strategic Initiatives for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Lisa Nakamura, Professor and Director of the Digital Studies Institute at University of Michigan, and Gabby Lim, Researcher, Technology and Social Change Research Project, Shorenstein Center, dicuss the impacts of the pandemic on inequalities. This talk is part of the [_Big, If True_](https://forum-network.org/series/big-if-true-series-tech-pandemic/) webinar series hosted by Joan Donovan, Ph.D., who heads up the [**Technology and Social Change Research Project** (TaSC)](https://shorensteincenter.org/about-us/areas-of-focus/technology-social-change/) at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Image courtesy of Flickr

Forum Network

Big, If True Series On Tech & The Pandemic

Partner:

Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Democracy During a Pandemic

Fri, Apr 10, 2020

The Shorenstein Center's Setti Warren, Nancy Gibbs, and Joan Donovan sit with Rob Faris, author of _Network Propaganda_ and Senior Researcher at the Shorenstein Center. Together they discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact our elections, campaigns, and journalism. This talk is part of the [_Big, If True_](https://forum-network.org/series/big-if-true-series-tech-pandemic/) webinar series hosted by Joan Donovan, Ph.D., who heads up the [**Technology and Social Change Research Project** (TaSC)](https://shorensteincenter.org/about-us/areas-of-focus/technology-social-change/) at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

Forum Network

Big, If True Series On Tech & The Pandemic

Partner:

Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Don't Panic, It's Just The Collapse Of Neoliberalism

Wed, Feb 26, 2020

**Yochai Benkler** is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Since the 1990s he has played a role in characterizing the role of information commons and decentralized collaboration to innovation, information production, and freedom in the networked economy and society. He discusses political misinformation in the news media and considers the impacts of our reaction to misinformation on our Democracy. Image: Pexels.com

Forum Network

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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Understanding and Reducing the Spread of Misinformation Online

Wed, Feb 5, 2020

David Rand gives an overview of his work assessing various interventions against misinformation and “fake news” on social media. He starts by discussing the limitations of two of the most commonly discussed approaches: warnings based on professional fact-checking, which are not scalable and can increase belief in misinformation which is not flagged; and emphasizing publishers, which is ineffective because untrusted outlets typically produce headlines that are judged as inaccurate even without knowing the source. He offers two promising approaches: nudging social media users to think about accuracy, which he shows increases the quality of news shared in a field experiment with over 5000 Twitter users who previously tweeted Breitbart links, and using crowdsourcing to identify misinformation, as he shows that crowds of laypeople produce judgments that are highly aligned with professional fact-checkers. Image: Pexels.com

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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Jane Perlez: On the Trail of Xi Jinping

Tue, Oct 29, 2019

Most recently, Jane Perlez served as the bureau chief for _The New York Times_ in Beijing. As a current fellow at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center, Perlez is writing about how the Chinese and American governments treat each other’s reporters as each side strives to describe, in very different ways, the world’s most important strategic relationship. Video from 1967 China: Clips taken from a short film made by Roger Whitaker, one of Jane's student travelmates 1967 on the trip.

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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Black Skinhead: Kanye, Conspiracism and the Winding Road to 2020

Tue, Nov 12, 2019

As a current fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Policy, Brandi Collins-Dexter is examining the digital ecosystem and how it has forever altered the political, economic, sociological and psychological ways in which we engage offline. Photo: [Official White House Photo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:President_Donald_Trump_and_Kanye_West_2018-10-11_(Cropped_2).jpg)

Forum Network

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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Fake News, Hate Speech, and the Future of Censorship

Tue, Mar 26, 2019

Katherine Mangu-Ward is editor in chief of Reason, the magazine of “free minds and free markets.” A few of her more memorable cover stories include a defense of plastic bags, an argument for why you almost certainly shouldn’t vote, and a welcome to our new robot overlords. Mangu-Ward started as a Reason intern in 2000, and has worked at The Weekly Standard and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and numerous other publications. She is a frequent commentator on radio and television networks such as National Public Radio, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox Business, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. She is a Future Tense Fellow at New America.

Forum Network

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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy

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