Stanford University

Media Choices, Niche Behavior, and Biases in Online Information

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Sandra González-Bailón seminar flyer

Join us  Tuesday, December 7th from 12 PM - 1 PM PST for “Media Choices, Niche Behavior, and Biases in Online Information” featuring Sandra González-Bailón, Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania. This seminar series is organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.  

The quality of our democracies relies on the quality of the information that citizens consume but we still know very little about how citizens engage with the news “in the wild”. In this talk, I will discuss two papers that examine that question in different settings. The first paper analyzes the media choices of a representative panel of the U.S. population (N ~ 55,000) as they consume TV, web, and YouTube content over a period of 44 months. Less than 10% of the panelists (N ~ 5,300) view and browse news on the three platforms. This small group of news hyper-consumers is formed predominantly by older male users with higher education. We find no evidence of substitution effects in the time these users spend consuming news on each of the three platforms, but consuming news across the media landscape is a choice that only a small and unrepresentative slice of the population makes. These results help us characterize the digital equivalent of the ‘opinion leaders’ first proposed to understand the effects of mass media. The hyper-consumers we identify in our analyses create the elite of opinion leaders that have a disproportionate influence in how news content is selected, circulated, and (ultimately) algorithmically amplified. That this small group is far from representing the population at large is one of the ways in which online information may perpetuate important biases in the salience of some topics over others. The second paper analyzes news sharing in social media during one of the largest protest mobilizations in U.S. history to examine ideological asymmetries in the posting of news content. We extract the list of URLs shared during the mobilization period and we characterize those web sites in terms of their audience reach and the ideological composition of that audience. We also analyze the reliability of the sites in terms of the credibility and transparency of the information they publish. We show that there is no evidence of unreliable sources having any prominent visibility during the protest period, but we do identify asymmetries in the ideological slant of the sources shared, with a clear bias towards right-leaning domains. Our results suggest that online networks are contested spaces where the activism of progressive movements coexists with the narratives of mainstream media, which gain visibility under the same stream of information but whose reporting is not necessarily aligned with the activists’ goals.

About the speaker:

Sandra González-Bailón is an Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, and affiliated faculty at the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences. Her research lies at the intersection of network science, computational tools, and political communication. She is the author of Decoding the Social World (MIT Press, 2017) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Networked Communication (OUP, 2020). More information on her research can be found at https://sandragonzalezbailon.net/
 
Her articles have appeared in journals like PNAS, Nature, Science, Political Communication, The Journal of Communication, and Social Networks, among others. She is the author of the book Decoding the Social World (MIT Press, 2017) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Networked Communication (OUP, 2020). She serves as Associate Editor for the journals Social Networks, EPJ Data Science, and The International Journal of Press/Politics, and she is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science. She leads the research group DiMeNet (/daɪmnet/) — acronym for Digital Media, Networks, and Political Communication.

 

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Benjamin Rubin

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Benjamin Rubin joined the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies as a member of the development team in 2021. Previously, he worked as a financial planner for Foster Klima & Company and as a professor of Roman Archaeology at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. Benjamin received his BA in English and Classics from Macalester College and a PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in Classical Art and Archaeology.

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Analyzing Social Media From A User-eye View With PIEGraph

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Deen Freelon photo along with flyer for event

Join us on November 16th for “Analyzing Social Media From A User-eye View With PIEGraph” from 12 - 1 PM PT featuring Deen Freelon, associate professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina. This session will be moderated by Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and is organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative. 

Quantitative social media research has traditionally been conducted from what might be called a platform-centric view, wherein researchers sample, collect, and analyzed data based on one or more topic- or user-specific keywords. Such studies have yielded many valuable insights, but they convey little about individual users’ tailored social media environments—what Professor Freelon calls the user-eye view. Studies that investigate social media from a user-eye view tend to be rare because of the expense involved and a limited number of suitable tools. This talk introduces PIEGraph, a novel system for user-eye view research that offers key advantages over existing systems. PIEGraph is lightweight, scalable, open-source, OS-independent, and collects data viewable from mobile and desktop interfaces directly from APIs. The system incorporates an extensible tagging taxonomy that allows for straightforward classification of a wide range of political, social, and cultural phenomena. The presentation will focus on how Professor Freelon’s research team is using PIEGraph to examine users’ potential levels of exposure to high- and low-quality information sources across the ideological spectrum.

Speakers:

Deen Freelon is an associate professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina and a principal researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP). His theoretical interests address how ordinary citizens use social media and other digital communication technologies for political purposes, paying particular attention to how identity characteristics (e.g. race, gender, ideology) influence these uses. Methodologically, he is interested in how computational research techniques can be used to answer some of the most fundamental questions of communication science. Freelon has worked at the forefront of political communication and computational social science for over a decade, coauthoring some of the first communication studies to apply computational methods to social media data. 

Jeff Hancock is the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and is Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Professor Hancock and his group work on understanding psychological and interpersonal processes in social media. The team specializes in using computational linguistics and experiments to understand how the words we use can reveal psychological and social dynamics, such as deception and trust, emotional dynamics, intimacy and relationships, and social support. Recently Professor Hancock has begun work on understanding the mental models people have about algorithms in social media, as well as working on the ethical issues associated with computational social science.

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Deen Freelon
Seminars

The World House Global Network presents Saumitra Jha

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On Friday, November 12, 2021, at 10:00 am PT, The World House Global Network is honored to host Saumitra Jha who will discuss: "Nonviolence: Lessons from India's Independence Struggle."

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Saumitra Jha

Saumitra Jha is an associate professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and, by courtesy, of economics and of political science at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences; and convenes the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law within the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs.

Jha’s research has been published in leading journals in economics and political science, including Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review and Journal of Development Economics, and he serves on a number of editorial boards. His research on ethnic tolerance has been recognized with the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in political economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 and his coauthored research on heroes with the Oliver Williamson Award for best paper by the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics in 2020. Jha was honored to receive the Stanford MSx Teacher of the Year Award, voted by the students program in 2020.

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Saumitra Jha Stanford University

Turkey-US Relations: Can the Vicious Cycle be Broken?

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Turkey-US relations have been going through the most turbulent episode since 2016. While occasional divergence of opinion between partners is natural, the frequency and the intensity of such disagreements have sharply increased over time, creating major trust issues between the allies. This talk will address the main causes behind the rift between Turkey and the US,  and warning against the path-dependent foreign policy behavior, will make specific policy recommendations to manage the bilateral tensions.
 

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​Oya Dursun-Özkanca
Oya Dursun-Özkanca is the Endowed Chair of International Studies Professor of Political Science at Elizabethtown College and the author of Turkey–West Relations: The Politics of Intra-alliance Opposition (Cambridge University Press 2019), and The Nexus Between Security Sector Reform/Governance and Sustainable Development Goal-16: An Examination of Conceptual Linkages and Policy Recommendations (The Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance 2021). Her edited volumes include The European Union as an Actor in Security Sector Reform (Routledge, 2014) and External Interventions in Civil Wars (with Stefan Wolff, Routledge, 2014).

In Fall 2021, she is a visiting scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. 

Online via Zoom

Oya Dursun-Özkanca Professor Endowed Chair of International Studies and Professor of Political Science Elizabethtown College
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CDDRL Special Events

The Global Spyware Crisis and How to Stop It

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David Kaye event, the global spyware crisis and how to stop it

Join us November 2nd from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for “The Global Spyware Crisis and How to Stop It” featuring David Kaye, professor of law at University of California, Irvine, and moderated by Kelly Born, director of the Cyber Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This seminar series is organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative. 

The private surveillance (or spyware) industry has thrived with low levels of transparency and public scrutiny and weak controls on transfers of technology. Governments offer limited information on the use of surveillance products and regulations of private surveillance companies. Meanwhile, these tools – most famously but not exclusively the Pegasus malware of the Israeli NSO Group – are increasingly used against journalists, opposition figures, those in dissent, and others. Public reporting – particularly energized by release of the Pegasus Project reporting by the Forbidden Stories consortium in the summer of 2021 – has begun to generate increasing global concern, and yet policy and law lag far behind. This presentation will focus on a human rights-based legal and policy framework for the regulation and accountability of, as well as transparency within, the private surveillance industry.

Speaker Profile:

David Kaye is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, director of its International Justice Clinic, and co-director of the Center on Fair Elections and Free Speech. From 2014 – 2020 he served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Author of Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (2019), he is currently Independent Chair of the Board of the Global Network Initiative and a Trustee of ARTICLE 19.

 

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David Kaye Professor of Law, UC Irvine

The World House Global Network presents Gerald and Marita Grudzen

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On Friday, October 29th, 2021 at 10am PT, The World House Global Network is honored to have Gerald and Marita Grudzen, founders of Global Ministries University who will discuss: "A Case Study in the Value of Interfaith Education for building Global Partnerships."
 

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The World House Global Network - Gerald and Marita Grudzen image

About Gerald Grudzen:

Gerald Grudzen, Ph.D. was one of the founders of Global Ministries University in 2001 shortly after the tragedy of 9/11. Grudzen has served as President of Global Ministries University since 2001 and has developed graduate interfaith education programs in collaboration with universities and research institutes in the United States, Africa, Turkey, India, and Thailand. Grudzen earned his Ph.D. in the history of Christianity and Islam from Columbia University.  He received a John Templeton award in 2003 for the development of the first scientific curriculum by Christian and Muslim scholars for the first major universities in Europe. He did this research in collaboration with the Ian Ramsey Center at Oxford University. In 2010 Grudzen co-led the largest American academic delegation ever sponsored by the US State Department for interfaith and intercultural dialogue with faculty members 'at several Egyptian Universities throughout Egypt including Al Azhar University in Cairo, the leading Sunni Muslim education center in the world.  

Beginning in 2012, Grudzen and Global Ministries Universities undertook a major effort to combat religious extremism in the coastal areas of Kenya where there had been frequent terrorist incidents.  The project brought together religious leaders and educators from both the coastal region and throughout Kenya to train these leaders in interfaith dialogue and methods of conflict resolution.  The success of this program led to its integration  with the Tangaza University Institute for Interreligious Dialogue and Islamic Studies in 2019. In 2021 Grudzen and his wife, Marita Grudzen,  co-chaired the US Hub for a three-day interfaith conference on Pope Francis' encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, co-sponsored with Tangaza Univesity and other Christian and Muslim universities in Kenya and Indonesia in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican.  Over 3000 participants took part in this conference from 15 different countries. A second international, interfaith conference is scheduled for February of 2023. Grudzen has authored or co-authored several books on the role of interfaith dialogue and collaboration in promoting peace and reconciliation across the world.

About Marita Grudzen:

Marita Grudzen, MHS, is Associate Director Emerita and a founding member of the Stanford Geriatric Education Center, a national center in ethnogeriatrics within Stanford University School of Medicine. Ms. Grudzen was co-recipient with Chaplain Bruce Feldstein, MD, of the Templeton Award(2001-06) for the medical school required curriculum they developed, Spirituality and Meaning in Medicine. Ms. Grudzen chaired a qualitative study of diverse healing practices in six ethnic minority populations in the Bay Area which was translated into health professional educational programming. She also developed a relationship of trust with the Afghan leadership in Fremont, CA during a series of three focus groups she co-led with the Afghan elder women’s community. Most recently, Marita co-developed the curriculum for the Fremont Community Ambassador Program for Seniors, and 25 hour Hospital to Home Transition training for volunteers from the Ethnic Minority Senior Services Consortium of San Jose, CA. Marita has received an international award from the Prime Minister of Turkey for her contribution to the First International Care Congress in Istanbul from May 2-8, 2005.

Since August of 2011, every year Ms. Grudzen with her husband have co-developed, implemented, evaluated and revised a 40 hour Interfaith Leadership Program in partnership with Christian, Muslim and African Indigenous Religious leaders in Kenya. Recruiting local expert and community leaders as co-presenters they returned every August until the current Covid era and maintain communication through the year with their interfaith partners through Skype and email.

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Gerald and Marita Grudzen Global Ministries University 

BOOK TALK | The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

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jacob helberg the wires of war event flyer showing his photo and book cover

the wires of war book cover showing a dragon and an eagle fighting over a rope
On Wednesday, October 27 at 10 am Pacific Time, please join Andrew Grotto, Director of Stanford’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance, for a conversation with Jacob Helberg, senior adviser at the Stanford Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to discuss his newly released book "The Wires of War:  Technology and the Global Struggle for Power" - an urgent and groundbreaking account of the high-stakes global cyberwar brewing between Western democracies and the autocracies of China and Russia that could potentially crush democracy.

From 2016 to 2020, Jacob Helberg led Google’s global internal product policy efforts to combat disinformation and foreign interference. During this time, he found himself in the midst of what can only be described as a quickly escalating two-front technology cold war between democracy and autocracy.

On the front-end, we’re fighting to control the software—applications, news information, social media platforms, and more—of what we see on the screens of our computers, tablets, and phones, a clash which started out primarily with Russia but now increasingly includes China and Iran. Even more ominously, we’re also engaged in a hidden back-end battle—largely with China—to control the Internet’s hardware, which includes devices like cellular phones, satellites, fiber-optic cables, and 5G networks.

This tech-fueled war will shape the world’s balance of power for the coming century as autocracies exploit twenty-first-century methods to re-divide the world into twentieth century-style spheres of influence. Helberg cautions that the spoils of this fight are power over every meaningful aspect of our lives, including our economy, our infrastructure, our national security, and ultimately, our national sovereignty. Without a firm partnership with the government, Silicon Valley is unable to protect democracy from the autocrats looking to sabotage it from Beijing to Moscow and Tehran. The stakes of the ongoing cyberwar are no less than our nation’s capacity to chart its own future, the freedom of our democratic allies, and even the ability of each of us to control our own fates, Helberg says. And time is quickly running out.


Praise for “The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power”: 

“An analytical tour de force on the rapidly increasing challenge of techno-authoritarian nations to our national security, our economy, and our democracy.” —President Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States

  

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Jawboning As A First Amendment Problem

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jawboning as a first amendment problem

PART OF THE FALL SEMINAR SERIES

Join us on October 19th for our weekly seminar from 12 PM - 1 PM PT featuring Genevieve Lakier, Professor of Law at University of Chicago's Law School and CPC Co-Director, Nate Persily. This series is organized by the Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Cyber Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

For years now, scholars have expressed alarm at the tendency of government officials to pressure—or “jawbone”—social media companies into taking down what the officials consider to be harmful or offensive speech, even when no law requires it. Scholars have worried, for good reason, that the practice of jawboning allows government officials to evade the stringent constraints on their power to regulate speech imposed by the First Amendment. But relatively little attention has been paid to the constitutional question of whether, or rather when, government jawboning itself violates the First Amendment. In fact, answering this question turns out to be quite difficult because of deep inconsistencies in the cases that deal with jawboning, both in the social media context and beyond. In this talk, I will explore what those inconsistencies are, why the case law is so unclear about where the line between permissible government pressure and unconstitutional governmental coercion falls, and what kind of jawboning rule might be necessary to protect free speech values in a public sphere in which both private companies and government officials possess considerable power to determine who can and cannot speak.

  

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Speaker Profile:

Genevieve Lakier teaches and writes about freedom of speech and American constitutional law. Her work examines the changing meaning of freedom of speech in the United States, the role that legislatures play in safeguarding free speech values, and the fight over freedom of speech on the social media platforms.
 
Genevieve has an AB from Princeton University, a JD from New York University School of Law, and an MA and PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Between 2006 and 2008, she was an Academy Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International and Area Studies at Harvard University. After law school, she clerked for Judge Leonard B. Sand of the Southern District of New York and Judge Martha C. Daughtrey of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before joining the faculty, Genevieve taught at the Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law. She will serve as the Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Knight Institute at Columbia University for the 2021-2022 school year, where she will be supervising a project exploring the relationship between the First Amendment and the regulation of lies, disinformation and misinformation.


 

Genevieve Lakier,
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