Social media can bring attention -- wanted or unwanted -- based on thoughtful contributions, but also on misunderstandings and the rallying of misanthropes.

What is the impact of social media on core values like free speech and free press?
What is the "epistemic constitution" and how has it been impacted by social media in today's political climate?
What are ethical and unethical persuasive uses of social media?
Do we need new policies to fix problems with social media?

Rauch, J. (2018). The constitution of knowledge. National Affairs, fall.

New York Times: Why do people fall for fake news? (1/20/2019)

New York Times: How one stupid tweet blew up Justine Sacco's life (2/12/2015)

Is social media good for democracy? Facebook weights in (1/22/18)

(optional) New York Times: The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture (1/14/19)

(optional) Bessi, A. (2016) Social Bots Distort the 2016 US Presidential Election Online Discussion. First Monday, 21(11).

(optional) The Guardian: Jewish woman in Montana sues over troll storm (1/23/2018)

(optional) Associated Press: Is troll storm protected speech? (12/1/2017)

(optional) Does banning forums for hate speech work? Apparently it does. Chandrasekharan et al: You Can’t Stay Here: The Efficacy of Reddit’s 2015 Ban
Examined Through Hate Speech, ACM Human-Computer Interaction (11/2017)

(optional) Science: Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook (2015)

Washington Monthly: How to fix facebook (1/2018)

(optional) Huffpost 1/22/18: The #SchumerShutdown hashtag is getting a big boost from Russian bots

(optional) Guess et al, Selective exposure

(optional) Pleadings in Gersh v. Anglin case

(optional) Our CMU TartanHacks team has taken first prize in Facebook's recent hackathon with a system that does text analysis to sort out online comments, to see which really address the issues, and which are taking different positions on an issues. The CMU presentation starts about 2.5 minutes in.

(optional) The Guardian: Former Facebook and Google workers launch campaign to fight tech addiction, 2/5/18.

(optional) New York Times: The Propaganda Tools Used by Russians to Influence the 2016 Election, 2/16/18

(optional) Oxford Internet Institute: The Computational Propaganda Project

slides for today