Research

At a broad level, 58% of Americans feel that computer programs will always reflect some level of human bias – although 40% think these programs can be designed in a way that is bias-free. And in various contexts, the public worries that these tools might violate privacy, fail to capture the nuance of complex situations, or simply put the people they are evaluating in an unfair situation. Public perceptions of algorithmic decision-making are also often highly contextual.

This study draws on participant observation and interviews with low-income adults in Chicago to show how the poor stay connected to phone service and mobile Internet through the possession of multiple phones, including those subsidized by government aid. The “accumulation” of phones by individuals is widely observed, though underexplored in scholarship. Popular media coverage in the US frames the possession of multiple phones by people in poverty as criminal or excessive.

The scale of Chinese state support for the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G, the close supply chain integration between the United States and China, and China’s role as an economic and military competitor to the United States create enormous economic, security, supply chain, and data privacy risks for the United States.

The 2018 edition of Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) focuses on local access models, specifically, community networks as self-organised, self-managed or locally developed solutions for local access, based on the conviction that one of the keys to affordable access is giving local people the skills and tools to solve their own connectivity challenges. Instead of buying an access service from a large corporate entity, community networks allow community members to self-provide and share infrastructure.

A majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic groups are YouTube adopters, with younger Americans standing out as especially avid users of the site. A new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults finds that these users are turning to YouTube for much more than entertainment. Roughly half of YouTube users say the platform is very important for helping them figure out how to do things they’ve never done before. That works out to 35% of all U.S. adults, once both users and non-users of the site are accounted for.

The time has come for a new set of guardrails for information capitalism that protect citizens and promote marketplace competition. The framework for such policies already exists and is embedded in the principles of common law. Companies have responsibilities: a “duty of care” to not cause harm, and a “duty to deal” to prevent monopoly bottlenecks. The harvesting of personal information – often without the individual’s knowledge – infringes on the sovereignty of the individual and their personal privacy.

Newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than US workers overall. There are signs, though, of a turning tide: Younger newsroom employees show greater racial, ethnic and gender diversity than their older colleagues, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of US Census Bureau data. More than three-quarters (77%) of newsroom employees – those who work as reporters, editors, photographers and videographers in the newspaper, broadcasting and internet publishing industries – are non-Hispanic whites, according to the analysis of 2012-2016 American Community Survey data.

The internet is growing less free around the world, and democracy itself is withering under its influence. Disinformation and propaganda disseminated online have poisoned the public sphere. The unbridled collection of personal data has broken down traditional notions of privacy. And a cohort of countries is moving toward digital authoritarianism by embracing the Chinese model of extensive censorship and automated surveillance systems. As a result of these trends, global internet freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2018.

Some 15% of US households with school-age children do not have a high-speed internet connection at home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of 2015 US Census Bureau data. New survey findings from the Center also show that some teens are more likely to face digital hurdles when trying to complete their homework.