The Social Dilemma has been causing a stir, somewhat ironically, on social media lately. While the film’s topic is timely, and explored with applaudable intentions, its subject matter is mishandled. For all of its values, and all of its flaws, the film’s diagnosis of social media is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of technology. Its …
Continue reading More than tools: who is responsible for the social dilemma?
In the confusion of our current times, we were not as quick about announcing the newest members of the Social Media Collective as we usually are. Like everyone, we find ourselves out of step with the timelessness of pandemic time. But as these new faces are showing up and settling in with us - on …
Continue reading new faces in the Social Media Collective… welcome!
Discussed in this post: Race, Policing, and Detroit's Project Green Lighthttp://esc.umich.edu/project-green-light/ Yesterday the Wayne County Prosecutor publicly apologized to the first American known to be wrongfully arrested via facial recognition algorithm: a black man arrested earlier this year by the Detroit Police. The statement cited the unreliability of software, especially as applied to people of …
Continue reading Race, Policing, and Computing: Project Green Light
In a new op-ed, published yesterday in The Hill, Mary L. Gray and her co-authors argue for the importance of human labor behind contact tracing and argue for a more human-centered approach in current tech strategies. As the Center for Disease Control (CDC) plans to massively scale up testing and contact-tracing for COVID-19, Gray argues …
Continue reading New op-ed from Mary L. Gray, on the vital human labor behind contact tracing
Many of our colleagues in academia have had to very quickly migrate their teaching online, in response to changes made by their universities in addressing the coronavirus. This can be so much work - our hats off to everyone who has done so gracefully and ingeniously. An online course can be a lot of hours …
We're thrilled that Desmond Patton, associate professor in the School of Social Work at Columbia University, is visiting us for the first half of 2020. He's a rare bird in our field, able both to explain the importance of cultural contexts in data science techniques to technical experts, and to do the important ethnographic work …
Continue reading SMC news: two new articles from Desmond Patton and his SafeLab team
A new edited collection from Melissa Zimdars and Kembrew McLeod called Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age (published by MIT Press, with a clever cover) includes an essay from me called "Platforms Throw Content Moderation at Every Problem." It's just one of many excellent essays, I recommend you check out the …
Continue reading SMC news: an essay in the new Fake News collection, and a podcast interview
We're happy to announce the publication of Germaine Halegoua's new book from NYU Press, The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Urban Place. (You can read an excerpt published by Flaunt Magazine, or an interview with Germaine about the book.) Five case studies from global and mid-sized cities around the world illustrate the …
Continue reading announcing The Digital City – a new book from Germaine Halegoua
I'm delighted to share that my new book, An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of craigslist, is out now from Princeton University Press. This book considers the vision of a single platform as instructive for thinking about the future of the web: craigslist. Over its 22 year history, craigslist has grown into …
Continue reading An Internet for the People – First Chapter Preview
Join us in congratulating Senior Principal Researcher and Social Media Collective member Mary Gray, for two achievements this week! Yesterday, the Digital Future Society released a report this week called “The Future of Work in the Digital Era: The Rise of Labour Platforms.” Mary co-authored the report with the other members of the Equitable Growth …
Continue reading Mary Gray, new report on the future of work
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