Research

Since the 2016 US presidential election, many Americans have expressed concern about the presence of misinformation online, particularly on social media. This topic has drawn the attention of much of the public: About two-thirds of Americans (66%) have heard about social media bots, though far fewer (16%) have heard a lot about these accounts. Among those aware of the phenomenon, a large majority are concerned that bot accounts are being used maliciously, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

In the leadup to the Federal Communications Commission's historic vote in Dec 2017 to repeal all network neutrality protections, 22 million comments were filed to the agency. The FCC did nothing to try to prevent comment stuffing and comment fraud, and even after the vote, made no attempt to help the public, journalists, policymakers actually understand what Americans actually told the FCC about the repeal of the 2015 Open Internet Order. This report aims to help make that clear. This report used the 800,000 comments identified as semantic standouts from form letter and fraud campaigns.

For residents in thousands of communities across the country – inner-city neighborhoods, affluent suburbs and rural towns– local newspapers have been the prime, if not sole, source of credible and comprehensive news and information that can affect the quality of their everyday lives. Yet, in the past decade and a half, nearly one in five newspapers has disappeared, and countless others have become shells – or “ghosts” – of themselves. Our research found a net loss since 2004 of almost 1,800 local newspapers.

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced dramatic gains in internet use in recent years. With this rapid growth in connectivity have come a host of potential problems, including fake news, political targeting and manipulation and financial scams, among others. Yet according to a new Pew Research Center analysis, most sub-Saharan Africans feel positively about the role the internet plays in their country.

This guidebook has a twofold purpose. It is a practical guide for digital inclusion practitioners -- local community-based organizations, libraries, housing authorities, government agencies, and others working directly with community members in need of affordable home broadband service. This guidebook also contains recommendations for policymakers and internet service providers to improve current offers and establish new offers.

The rise of digital media labs and spaces for content creation in public libraries has been documented in the scholarly literature. However, fewer studies have investigated the outcomes of media literacy initiatives in community media centers (CMCs) and how they might inform similar programs and services in public libraries. This article reports findings from a study that used qualitative research to investigate the current goals and activities of CMCs across the United States.

Tribal lands have lower levels of broadband access than the rest of the nation. Congress has prioritized identifying unserved areas and targeting funds to increase broadband deployment, including on tribal lands. In this testimony, the GAO found:

How did misinformation spread during the 2016 presidential election and has anything changed since? A new study of more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 misinformation and conspiracy news outlets answers this question, revealing that the concentrated “fake news” ecosystem active during the 2016 election is still in place today. The report highlights more than 6.6 million tweets linking to fake news and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election.

EducationSuperHighway released its annual State of the States report highlighting the major progress that has been achieved to connect nearly every public school classroom to high-speed broadband. At the same time, the report cites the urgent need to close the digital divide for 2.3 million students across the nation who lack access to the minimum connectivity required for digital learning. The report credits strong bipartisan support from state policymakers for the progress made over the past five years.

In a new paper, we explore the extent to which community-building is possible on social media platforms, particularly on issues where partisanship has forced many Americans to choose sides on politically charged issues. The paper, presented at the 2018 TPRC conference, focuses on the demonstrated trends of partisanship in the network neutrality debate, a regulatory framework that prohibits blocking and unreasonable discrimination by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and promotes greater consumer transparency. Our specific inquiry is about the ability of these platforms to present brokers wh