Interested in doing a Ph.D studying online communities, governance, digital open infrastructure, etc.? Several faculty at @communitydata.science are recruiting students for next year! Join our Prospective Student Q&A on September 26: blog.communitydata.science/prospective-...

Nudging very much appeals to people who want a politics without politics.

moonflower... santana cover 🌸

Drawing on some of my work from the past year at the Center for an Informed Public, I published a piece in Lawfare with my colleague Stephen Prochaska.

This is a preliminary attempt to synthesize the two for those working in community governance, content moderation, or information integrity spaces... more to come!!

I have been thinking recently about the coalescing field of disinfo studies and the more commons-based approaches to online community governance, and where these two perspectives conflict when it comes to addressing online information manipulation and related threats...

a new short research brief with @mako.cc and @aaronshaw.bsky.social synthesizes some of the work I presented at @communitydata.science Science of Community Dialogues back in April! zenodo.org/records/1560...

For the June issue of @thenation.com, I wrote about the Harper’s letter 5 years later, and how under a quarter of its signatories have spoken out about Mahmoud Khalil and other campus activists imprisoned for speech.

7/ And the study has harmed CMV, an important public sphere for people to engage in debate, learn new things, have their assumptions challenged, and maybe even their minds changed. Are people going to trust that they aren’t engaging with bots? And if they don’t, can the community serve its mission?

Ed Martin's latest target: Wikipedia.

The interim U.S. attorney and pro-Trump bulldog has sent a letter seeming to threaten the Wikimedia Foundation's tax-exempt status over allegations that it is "spreading propaganda." Our story: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Seattle! Playing the NEW Hidden Hall in Fremont this Sunday with my funk/r&b/latin group, Soleado 😌💃

🚨 My first solo-authored piece is out in Electoral Studies! 👽
I examine when and how conspiracy theories become participatory, increasing political mobilization. Using the United States and Turkey as cases of a most-different-systems design, I explore how conspiracy theories drive political action.

So weird to see colleges promoting their USNWR grad school rankings today like grad students aren’t being disappeared by their government.

This is tomorrow! Register online here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Are you an organizer of an online group/community thinking through governance strategies for resisting online information manipulation? Join
@communitydata.science for our next Community Dialogue!

DHS just detained a Columbia student who helped lead campus protests—a direct attack on campus activism. This timeline shows why authoritarians fear student protests: they're often the first and most effective catalysts for pro-democracy movements.

Traditional counter-disinformation strategies in this space, however, tend to miss these nuanced dynamics.

Ungated version here: zarine.net/Miyashita_et...

We also reflect on how these operations function as "actants" that actively shape the wider peacekeeping ecosystem -- concern over their impact has shaped peacekeeping self-image, resourcing and coalition-building.

Using a combination of interviews and analyses of public social media trace data (RIP CrowdTangle), we argue that these campaigns are not just top-down, state-directed phenomena, but involve complex interactions between state actors, influencers, and everyday people (they're participatory).

Our paper examines how disinformation campaigns interact with and affect UN peacekeeping missions, focusing on two cases involving the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).

New paper in International Peacekeeping with Naomi Miyashita, Laura De Backer, and @katestarbird.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The New Yorker says Wikipedia is a beacon of hope, with quotes from me and @mako.cc www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

The lawsuit brought by Rumble and Trump Media against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice de Moraes is *fascinating* in ways that will need a long thread to unpack. 1/

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

each one of those university programs that push kids to "be entrepreneurial" and "solve community problems with innovation" is a public policy failure and an abdication of the role of the university in the public sphere.

stop putting me on committees if you dont want me to say this to deans.