News & Commentary

We responded to Ofcom’s public request for evidence on researcher access to online service data for safety research, highlighting barriers researchers face when accessing social media data, the challenges of limited information sharing, potential ways to improve data access, and examples of robust data-sharing practices.

Greater transparency around AI-generated political advertising would transform researchers' ability to understand its potential effects on democracy and elections.

Even if TikTok is sold to a non-Chinese buyer, the threat of foreign influence will remain. That’s why researchers need independent data access.

A look at our top articles, events, and more from the past year.

The European Commission's Digital Services Act is a critical step towards supporting data access for independent research. We submitted comments on this legislation, advocating for structures and mechanisms that would ensure secure and standardized data sharing.

Conducting rigorous research to understand the increasingly fragmented media environment is more important than ever.

The letter, signed by more than 50 organizations and individuals, urges Meta to maintain full functionality of CrowdTangle, a critical tool used to investigate the flow of information on its platforms.

At CSMaP, Allen and Barrie will serve as core faculty members leading research projects on urgent topics related to digital media and democracy.

Although portability is often considered through a competition lens, policymakers and companies should understand its potential impact on policy-relevant research efforts and ensure that portability can support research on the impacts of digital platforms and services.

A look at our top articles, events, and more from the past year.

Unprecedented research in the context of the 2020 presidential election reveals algorithms are extremely influential in people’s on-platform experiences and there is significant ideological segregation in political news exposure but, among consenting study participants, changes to critical aspects of the algorithms that determine what they saw did not sway political attitudes.

Generative AI has the potential to supercharge the production and spread of disinformation on social media. In an op-ed for The Hill, Joshua A. Tucker breaks down the risks AI poses going into the 2024 election -- and what can be done to mitigate them.

In response to the European Commission's Digital Services Act, we submitted comments highlighting the importance of data access for independent research and suggested standards for data access mechanisms.

What we can (and can't) learn from Twitter's partial open-sourcing of its recommendation algorithm.

As a leader in applied data science with high-level experience across Twitter, Meta, and Pew, Messing will leverage his strong technical background and deep knowledge of the platforms to expand CSMaP’s research capacity.

A look at our top articles, events, and more from the past year.

In 2020, Craig Newmark Philanthropies donated $400,000 to support our PhD students, ensuring they could continue their research projects examining some of the biggest questions at the intersection of social media and democracy. Here is an update on what they've been working on this past year thanks to Craig's generous support.

We're committed to supporting open and accessible science, which includes promoting the creation and use of open-source software, providing high-quality replication materials for our publications, and contributing to existing open-source tools and frameworks. To do so, we created an open-source tool to make using transformers easier and explain how to use it here.

Here’s how we create a healthy research environment for those studying harmful online content.

NYU has established the Center for Social Media and Politics, which will examine the production, flow, and impact of social media content in the political sphere, as well as support research that uses social media data to study politics.