In 2021, we published An Illustrated Field Guide to Social Media with the Knight First Amendment Institute. It was the culmination of a months-long exploration of alternative social media “logics” meant to encourage fresh thinking about the possibilities for social media. In the two years since, we’ve been heartened to see the book used in… Continue reading Our Revised and Expanded Field Guide to Social Media is Coming Soon to MIT Press
Tag: research
Research conducted here at iDPI
“From Community Governance to Customer Service and Back Again: Re-Examining Pre-Web Models of Online Governance to Address Platforms’ Crisis of Legitimacy”
Ethan and Chand cover the history of “trust and safety” and talk about what it will take to build a safe Internet, from the standpoints of both technology and content moderation. Published by Social Media and Society, September 2023.
Freq: A Platform Tuned for Music Community
Freq is an experimental platform for social music discovery from the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst.
The Three-Legged Stool: A Manifesto for a Smaller, Denser Internet
“The Three-Legged Stool” is the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure’s banner white paper: the culmination of our work here at the lab so far and our roadmap for our efforts in the coming years. It was written primarily by Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci and Michael Sugarman under the editorial direction of Ethan Zuckerman. Access “The Three-Legged Stool”… Continue reading The Three-Legged Stool: A Manifesto for a Smaller, Denser Internet
Creating PublicSpaces by Geert-Jan Bogaerts, José Van Dijck, and Ethan Zuckerman
In Digital Government: Research and Practice. Abstract: Institutions like public broadcasters and universities face conflicts of values when using surveillant digital tools: organizations bound to protect the privacy and respect their autonomy of their constituents – which we term “values-led organizations” – find those values undermined by tools they must use to conduct business online.… Continue reading Creating PublicSpaces by Geert-Jan Bogaerts, José Van Dijck, and Ethan Zuckerman
How social media could teach us to be better citizens by Ethan Zuckerman
In Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society – Special Issue on “Digital Citizenship.” Abstract: In 1995, social scientist Robert Putnam suggested that American civic life was weakening because people were retreating from public spaces. Local organizations from bowling leagues to men’s lodges, Putnam believed, helped train citizens in the mechanics of civics. People learn to… Continue reading How social media could teach us to be better citizens by Ethan Zuckerman
Yale Journal of Law and Technology: Forgetful Advertising, Imagining a More Responsible Ad System
Chand and Ethan just published a long-in-the-making paper proposing a new system for targetted advertising that doesn’t rely on a surveillance model. Check it out in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology’s special issue “A Healthy Digital Public Sphere.”
An Illustrated Field Guide to Social Media
Ethan Zuckerman and Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci published the ebook An Illustrated Field Guide to Social Media with original artwork by Fiammetta Ghedini.
he book is adapted from the Mapping Social Media” series of blog posts written by Ethan and Chand for the Knight Foundation, documenting the wide variety of ways social media is put together on the Internet.
New Approaches to Platform Data Research
In March, we published iDPI’s first piece of research, New Approaches to Platform Data Research. This was written by Elizabeth Hansen-Shapiro, Michael Sugarman, Fernando Bermejo, and Ethan Zuckerman. Download the full report here. The white paper was originally commissioned by the NetGain partnership as a post-mortem on the Social Science One initiative. Ultimately, the research… Continue reading New Approaches to Platform Data Research