American Democracy is an Easy Target

Americans have become paranoid about foreign cyberattacks on their political system, but they have nobody but themselves to blame.

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Other Writing:

Essay

Blogs and Bullets II: New Media and Conflict after the Arab Spring with Sean Aday, Marc Lynch, John Sides and Deen Freelon

Based on Twitter and Facebook data gathered during the 2011 Arab revolutions, the authors of this Peaceworks report find that new media informed international audiences and mainstream media reporting, but they find less evidence that it played a direct role in organizing protests or allowing local audiences to share self-generated news directly with one another. ...
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Academic Article

Bias, Skew and Search Engines Suffice to Explain Online Toxicity – with Cosma Shalizi

Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi (2024), “Bias, Skew and Search Engines Suffice to Explain Online Toxicity,” Communications of the ACM, preprint, 67,4:25-28. U.S. political discourse seems to have fissioned into discrete bubbles, each reflecting its owndistorted image of the world. Many blame machine-learning algorithms that purportedly maximize“engagement” — serving up content that keeps YouTube or ...
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