In the Media

Joshua Tucker sits down with the hosts of the Political Reality podcast to discuss misinformation and how we quantify it.

"While it would in many ways be desirable for the president to stay above the fray and away from sharing AI-generated images, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees his time in office as a nonstop political campaign," Joshua Tucker told AFP.

Solomon Messing, an associate professor at New York University in the Center for Social Media and Politics, prompted Grok, the AI chatbot created by Elon Musk, to generate two images of the apparent federal agent “without a mask,” and got images of two different white men. Doing so did not even require signing in to access this service.

To succeed in office Mamdani will need to keep his supporters engaged with day-to-day governing - and that is not as thrilling as a high-stakes political race, Jonathan Nagler, co-director of NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics, told the BBC.

“Would it affect [unrelated] engineers if the company is seen as participating in censorship? There may be an opening to give the administration the ability to deny visas for a company as a whole,” Scott Brennen said.

Jonathan Nagler spoke with LAist about X's new 'About This Account' tool as well as the proliferation of misinformation online.

“We have a history of foreign people trying to use social media for foreign influence … and there are multiple reasons why you might expect foreign actors to want to intervene in politics, both political and economic reasons,” Joshua Tucker told CNN.

“The challenge for influencers is to come up with issues to run on,” Jonathan Nagler told Jewish Insider. “They need some reasons to suggest they can be politically relevant and do something that matters to people.”

"While it would in many ways be desirable for the president of the United States to stay above the fray and away from sharing AI images, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees his time in office as a non-stop political campaign," Joshua Tucker told AFP.

Joshua Tucker talks with Sabrina Marandola about Zohran Mamdani's mayoral victory.

Joshua Tucker recommends Competitive Authoritarianism by Lucan Way and Steve Levitsky for those looking to understand this political moment.

“One thing Sora is doing for better or worse is shifting the Overton window –– accelerating the public’s understanding that seeing is no longer believing when it comes to video,” said Solomon Messing.

Jonathan Nagler comments on the Trump Administration's use of digital media

Following the release of the Sora app, Solomon Messing speaks with NPR on the new era of AI in social media

In Tech Policy Press, Zeve Sanderson and Scott Brennen discuss what legislators can do to adjust existing age assurance laws for technologies, such as AI chatbots, that don’t fit the platform model they were built for.

Zeve Sanderson and Scott Brennen reflect on the past decade in the "misinformation field" for Noema, arguing the paradigm of research has overstated online misinformation’s role in politics, ignored much of what we know about how communication functions, and directed attention to strategies ill-suited to today’s information environment.

Jonathan Nagler describes the social media strategy used in New York City's mayoral race.

“What you’ve seen is this general movement among politicians, or those that are sort of skillful at doing this, into trying to produce this kind of content,” Josh Tucker told CNN.

"In a time where Y2K is back and even trendy among Gen Z, their new fascination with George W. Bush is likely our generation's yearning for 'simpler times,' despite being too young or not alive to remember 9/11 or the Iraq War," Lama Mohammed told Newsweek.

Zeve Sanderson states, "Mamdani has done almost the exact opposite...He made himself feel approachable and knowable by communicating his policy agenda and by us coming to understand him through his articulation of his policy agenda directly to the public via social media.”

Josh Tucker tells NBC News the Trump administration's digital strategy on social media is designed to “get people’s attention” and “privileges things that pop and that go viral.”

“Lurie’s not doing just the vibes and values like [Kamala] Harris. He’s also not quite Mamdani, who had this amazing two-minute video of him breaking down the food truck permitting process,” said Zeve Sanderson

Zeve Sanderson gives context on the Supreme Court’s recent review of age verification laws on adult websites as well as explaining some possibly less-restrictive alternatives to current verification methods.

Zeve Sanderson speaks to NBC News on Zohran Mamdani's Mayoral campaign as compared to Andrew Cuomo's campaign.

"If a model has seen content like this during pretraining, there's the potential for the model to mimic the style and substance of the worst offenders on the internet," said Solomon Messing.