News & Commentary

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

When the Supreme Court considers the Florida and Texas laws, it should craft rulings that leave ample room for legislative and regulatory efforts to mandate transparency and access to data.

Just like social media, a key challenge to studying the public's use of generative AI is the lack of data. AI companies could solve this by making it easier for users to donate their data to research.

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 Biden-Harris Administration's public request for information on mitigating the risks of AI, we submitted comments highlighting the importance of transparent standards for identifying and labeling AI generated content online.

Since taking over at Twitter, Elon Musk's personal beliefs have had an outsized influence on the platform. As its content and user base evolve, it's unclear whether a Musk owned Twitter can maintain the platform's central role in the American political media landscape.

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.

BlueSky is a half-decentralized social network designed to replace Twitter. Will it keep its luster as it scales up?

Elon Musk has said that increasing transparency on Twitter is one of his highest priorities, but his actions show otherwise.

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

While TikTok’s Researcher API is a promising step in the right direction, mandated data requirements are paramount for ensuring that these lines of research continue.

In the modern digital information era, information wars are always global.

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.

New study shows online push by foreign disinformation accounts didn’t change attitudes or voting behavior — but the disinformation effort may still have had consequences.

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

The grant will help us conduct cutting-edge research and advance evidence-based public policy. It also supports research from Tiago Ventura, a CSMaP postdoc who will join the latest cohort of Siegel Research Fellows.

We still don’t know the extent of what Musk has actually changed within Twitter. But without mandated data access for researchers, we risk never knowing their impact on society as well.

Our scholars won Best Article in the Information Technology and Politics Section.

New study shows how site’s algorithms perpetuate existing misperceptions.

As 2022 candidates embrace Trump's Big Lie, social platforms are reducing election integrity efforts. What should they do to safeguard the midterms?

On average, source credibility labels don’t change whether someone reads low-quality news sources — but it does appear to improve the news diet quality of the heaviest consumers of misinformation.

Ahead of a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on platform transparency, we submitted a letter outlining the type of research questions we want to answer — and the social media data we need to answer them.

There are three areas — content moderation, transparency, and data access — to watch closely as Musk takes ownership of Twitter.

Will Russia’s propaganda campaign continue to work on its citizens and others? Or will the lies fall apart?