ABSTRACT. ‘Deepfakes’ is a form of machine learning that creates fake videos by grafting a new face (learned from existing images and video) over a pre-existing one in an original video. The technology has been used to create fake pornography, but there is concern that it will soon be used for politically nefarious ends. This study seeks to understand how news media has characterized the problem(s) presented by deepfakes. Using content analysis, we found four different problems dominant in news media coverage: deepfakes are easy to produce and distribute; deepfakes undermine the political process; deepfakes creates false beliefs; and deepfakes are an attack on women. We provide an overview of each problem followed by a discussion about the varying degrees of emphasis given to each problem and the implications this has for the public’s perception and construction of deepfakes.

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The 2016 US presidential election produced a surprising upset for Democrats, as the.  Polls had clearly predicted a Hillary Clinton victory.  When Donald Trump was declared President, the nation exploded.  An immediate answer to this unexpected result was sought, with a shocking possible explanation — could the Russians have interfered with the elections?  A bipartisan inquiry revealed that over 11.4 million American Facebook users had been subjected to Russian propaganda, in the form of Facebook ads, produced by a Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency (IRA). The purpose of this research was to study the 344 Facebook ads submitted one month prior to the election.  The sponsors of each set of ads was initially identified as either a Right Troll or a Left Troll based on the nature of the corresponding messages.  Open coding was then used to classify the ads as either, 1) reflecting pre-existing struggles and past situations, 2) referencing current values, or 3) pertaining to future goals and objectives.  Any reference to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was also noted, as was the amount of money spent on the ads, the ad impressions and the ad click-through rate.  Although the majority of Facebook ads were sponsored by Left Trolls, the Right Trolls spent a greater amount of money on their fewer ads, had a lower ad launch rate, and also had a lower click-through rate.  The majority of the Facebook ads reflected current issues, regardless of whether they were Left or Right Troll based.  No Anti-Clinton ads were produced by the Left Trolls prior to the election.  The fact that Hillary Clinton was expected to win the 2016 Presidential election helps explain this absence.  There were only ten ads that explicitly mentioned either Clinton and/or Trump and only a little over $2,000 was spent on these ads.  This study indicates that the Russian Facebook ads published the month prior to the election, had little impact in the final election outcome.

ABSTRACT. In this paper we study online pre-election campaign for the Russian presidential elections, March 18th 2018. Our analysis show clusters of groups and pages that unite each candidates’ supporters. The page subscriptions may be farther used to explain online voting behavior. Our analyses demonstrate how online groups subscriptions are related to the users’ political preferences, and how it is expressed in the online user activity via  “likes” to a post or a vote in an online poll.

ABSTRACT. In this mixed-methods study of political discourse, we study the affordances of Twitter in the context of free speech in In- dia. We critically examine specific cases of the legal prosecu- tion of free speech and the use of extreme speech in attacks on people to document the risks to citizens when they engage in antagonistic online discourse, particularly against the state or political institutions. We follow this up with an in-depth quan- titative study of the use of extreme speech through 828 hash- tags used by over 5000 political actors on Twitter and find that politicians are rewarded, through higher retweet rates, when they engage in extreme or uncivil messaging. We contextual- ize these findings to the postcolonial history of India and the laws and institutions that enable differential consequences for engaging in various forms of speech. In conclusion, we pro- pose that the affordances of social media need to be carefully considered for their unintended consequences, and that func- tional access to free speech may differ dramatically based on one’s access to institutions.

ABSTRACT. On July 9, 2018, President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. On the morning of October 7, 2018, newspapers announced Kavanaugh‘s swearing in as the newest Supreme Court justice. During the intervening weeks, concern regarding the future of the court and multiple allegations of sexual assault led to considerable discussion regarding the nomination. In this talk I present and discuss research into gender and party patterns of discussion regarding the Kavanaugh nomination by state legislators on the social media platform Twitter during the fall of 2018. Results from a multistate analysis of over 100,000 social media posts by state legislators will be presented.  

ABSTRACT. Twitter data is often analyzed in academic settings with either qualitative or quantitative methodologies in mind. In comparison, this paper describes the qualitative and quantitative ways that non-academic public sector organisations analyze their Twitter data after customer service interactions.

ABSTRACT. This exploratory study aimed to assess the usage of social media in Mongolian higher education, as perceived by the university educators. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 educators in individual and group settings. This study provides an insight of social media usage in Mongolia.

ABSTRACT. This study uses activity systems analysis to examine how rules shape high school students’ social media networks and tool use. Findings show how layers of rules govern their social media use. Adults exist outside their networks, but play an important offline role in regulating teenagers’ activities.

ABSTRACT. Social media has become an important part of government communication routines. This paper argues that there are important privacy and quality considerations to be taken into account in government social media use. It also explores what constitutes the effective use of social media by government.

ABSTRACT. We explore how scholarly contributions (as a proxy for expert, trusted opinions) to popular debates are shared and engaged with via social media. Using conversations on Twitter about Australia Day - a historically contested date - as a case study, our preliminary findings suggest that scholarly contributions do manage to carve out a presence in the public debate across ideological positions.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to provide a framework to assess who tweet about climate research through the analysis of users Twitter bios. First results indicate a significant engagement by users outside of academia, providing an insight on how research may reach a broader public on Twitter.

ABSTRACT. As our daily lives are increasingly mediated through online platforms, social media, and digital devices, we are starting to see that digital technologies are having a profound impact on how we interact with social, political, economic, and cultural structures and trends. We are now only beginning to see the human rights implications of how digital technologies, in combination with the structure of current content moderation strategies, are reshaping contemporary politics. The events of Christchurch, NZ demonstrated that online ‘othering’ and narratives of division seep into offline spaces and can have catastrophic ‘real-life’ impacts that demand innovative policy responses from governments around the world. This roundtable will introduce participants to some of the research and policy work being conducted by the Digital Inclusion Lab at Global Affairs Canada to help better understand how online hate and other harmful content is shaping behaviour offline – including violence. In this roundtable, participants will get a peek at how a policy lab embedded within a government department goes about developing a data strategy for policy development around emerging threats such as online hate. Participants will also get an opportunity to discuss, share insights and best practices around collecting public online data and digital tools can be used strategically to protect populations and to advance policy interventions that promote human rights, freedom and inclusion.

ABSTRACT. I examine the term “user” in privacy news with topic modeling and regression. I show “user” has unique meaning compared to other common terms for person. I theorize it collapses people with different privacy needs into a single term, and may inhibit reasoning about multifaceted privacy problems.

ABSTRACT. The focus of this research is on business partnerships of complementors with social media platforms in the United States. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation modeling is used to test a 4-construct model. Trust played a key role with respect to a complementor’s views on commitment and innovation, and was the strongest driver of the model with respect to the target construct, relationship value.

ABSTRACT. Users are permanently distracted. Previous research studied motivation for using social media, but an understanding of users’ distraction is missing. This quantitative online study identified two reasons for why people let themselves get distracted by social media: avoidance and social reasons.

ABSTRACT. A growing body of research examines the relationship between scholars’ engagement with online platforms and their experiences with online harassment (Vera-Gray, 2017). Despite an increase in such research, this area remains under-explored (Jordan and Weller 2018). Experiences with online harassment can influence what scholars’ choose to disseminate online, how they engage, and can impact their mental well-being and result in serious professional consequences (Barlow & Awan, 2016). Because of such chilling effects, it is vitally important to study the problem of online harassment in academia. This paper uses the concept of economic vandalism (Jane, 2018) to understand the damaging impact of online harassment. Economic vandalism describes a new form of workplace harassment that includes online spaces and addresses the way online harassment can cause “professional and economic harms” (Jane, 2018, p. 576). Using this framework and survey methodology (N=182), this paper addresses two questions: First, what is the nature of the online harassment experienced by scholars? And second, what effect does online harassment have for scholars? Our findings show that the harassment experienced is closely tied to the core activities of the profession and identity of being a scholar. For example, a frequent trigger for abuse, such as one's teaching activities, and type of abuse, such as having one’s credentials questioned, make scholars more vulnerable by virtue of the work they do. The impact of online harassment reported by our participants supports Jane’s (2018) assertion that online spaces are an extension of workplace harassment.