Research

The future of political warfare: Russia, the West, and the coming age of global digital competition

The Kremlin’s political warfare against democratic countries has evolved from overt to covert influence activities. But while Russia has pioneered the toolkit of asymmetric measures for the 21st century, including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, these tools are already yesterday’s game. Technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and machine learning, combined with the growing availability of big data, have set the stage for a new era of sophisticated, inexpensive, and highly impactful political warfare.

Social Media Use in 2018

The social media landscape in early 2018 is defined by a mix of long-standing trends and newly emerging narratives. Facebook and YouTube dominate this landscape, as notable majorities of U.S. adults use each of these sites. At the same time, younger Americans (especially those ages 18 to 24) stand out for embracing a variety of platforms and using them frequently. Some 78% of 18- to 24-year-olds use Snapchat, and a sizeable majority of these users (71%) visit the platform multiple times per day.

Multisided Platforms and Antitrust Enforcement

Multisided platforms are ubiquitous in today’s economy. Although newspapers demonstrate that the platform business model is scarcely new, recent economic analysis has explored more deeply the manner of its operation. Drawing upon these insights, we conclude that enforcers and courts should use a multiple-markets approach in which different groups of users on different sides of a platform belong in different product markets. This approach appropriately accounts for cross-market network effects without collapsing all of a platform’s users into a single product market.

The Inclusive Internet Index 2018

The Index provides an international benchmark of internet inclusion across four categories: availability, affordability, relevance and readiness. Among the countries included in the Index, the proportion of men that access the Internet is, on average, 33.5% higher than the proportion of women. Among low-income countries, the gender gap is 80.2% in favour of men.

To and Through Anchors: A Strategy to Connect Rural Communities

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition released a new cost study and broadband strategy focused on rural broadband deployment. The cost study estimates that it will cost less than $20 billion to connect all unserved schools, libraries, health providers, community colleges, and other anchor institutions (outside of Alaska) to fiber.

Internet Access Services: Status as of December 31, 2016

This report summarizes information about Internet access connections in the United States as of December 31, 2016 as collected by FCC Form 477. For purposes of this report, Internet access connections are those in service, over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction, and reported to the FCC through Form 477. The report includes data on total and residential Internet access connections by downstream and upstream speed, by technology, by geography, and over time.

Thirty-Fifth Quarterly Status Report to Congress Regarding BTOP

As of September 30, 2017, only two BTOP infrastructure projects remained in active status: Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority (LA-RICS) and the Executive Office of the State of Mississippi (Mississippi). All remaining projects completed their project activities. NTIA continues to protect taxpayer investments by proactively engaging with these grant recipients to monitor project activities and grant compliance. Each quarter, the active BTOP recipients also report their financial and project performance.

Broadband to the Neighborhood: Digital Divides in Detroit

The results of a study of Internet (non)use in three neighborhoods of Detroit, Michigan. The findings of this study identify key digital divides within these neighborhoods, and illuminate a common pattern of Internet use in the city – what might be called Detroit’s Internet ecosystem – that helps explain the relative lack of Internet access across its households. The findings provide the basis for a set of recommendations for narrowing the digital divide, including ways to address such issues as the affordability of the Internet.

Very liberal or conservative legislators most likely to share news on Facebook

The most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017. Members of Congress with very conservative or very liberal voting records shared news links in about 14% of all their posts. But members with more moderate ideology scores shared links to news stories in just 6% of their posts. Some of the outlets included in the study were linked to exclusively by Democrats or by Republicans in Congress.

What internet search data reveal about Donald Trump’s first year in office

In this report, I inaugurate the first in a series of big data analyses that will chart long-term trends. In the same way that researchers track political, economic, and social activities, it is useful to deploy social media and event histories to identify patterns in internet search behavior regarding President Doanld Trump. Using this information, I find several important developments: