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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?

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.

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.

That could affect their votes — and their safety from covid-19.

Republican candidates have dramatically increased how much they share from unreliable sources in just two years.

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.

Our research finds that after a prominent male media personality targets a female journalist, the prevalence of hateful speech targeting those journalists increases in the immediate aftermath, often taking days to decrease. 

She’s gaining followers and ‘likes’ on other social media platforms, our research finds.

Twitter’s decision to deactivate trending topics in Ethiopia did not reduce the volume or toxicity of tweets about the civil war.

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

Recap of our recent event with academic, policy, and tech experts on how to make social media a safer and more civil place.

Congress should mandate an unprecedented corporate data-sharing program to enable outside, independent researchers to conduct the kinds of analysis on social media platforms that firm insiders routinely perform.

Warning users of the potential consequences of their behavior can temporarily reduce their hateful language.

With access to these documents, scholars could support the media, public, and policymakers in identifying where Facebook’s internal research is conclusive, what inferences can be drawn, which topics require more evidence and future research, and what that research should be.

Our research suggests conservative politicians are ‘ratioed’ more often, which may explain why they’re in your timeline.

As the Facebook Papers revelations continue, it’s critical for the government, through legislation or regulation, to require social media platforms to be more transparent and open up more data to outside researchers.

The paper’s findings reveal how misinformation spreads across networks and point to need to improve content-moderation techniques.

We analyzed Twitter discussions around two very different topics and found striking similarities in how political discussions evolve online.

Our research shows that the amount of hate speech on Twitter did not systematically increase during and immediately after the 2016 presidential campaign.

Those who dislike Democrats and don’t mind white nationalists. That includes plenty of Republicans with college educations.