Reports that employ attempts to inform communications policymaking in a systematically and scientific manner.
Research
Officials use social media to monitor, intervene in disease outbreaks
Public health officials say that using text messages, social media platforms, and other digital tools can be key in both tracking the health care behavior of people and disseminating lifesaving information during emergency situations. During public health emergencies — such as the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — it's difficult for public health officials to monitor people's health care behavior.
Smartphone-only internet users grow from 12% in 2016 to 20% in 2018
A growing number of US households are exclusively accessing the internet via smartphones, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. While much of the discussion about cord cutting in the US is focused on households that are canceling cable or satellite TV services, this latest finding indicates the trend is now expanding into broadband services.

FCC's Data Overstate Access, and Tribes Face Barriers Accessing Funding
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:
Trump’s tweets are less read and influential than people may think
A new Public Affairs Council/Morning Consult poll reveals that a majority of Americans have become indifferent toward President Trump's tweets on business, political news and campaign finances practices. Several polls have revealed Americans distrust political news from social media, but now responses show the president is no exception.
Disinformation, 'Fake News’ and Influence Campaigns on Twitter‘
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 2018 State of the States report
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.

Can social media help build communities?
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

Internet, social media use and device ownership in U.S. have plateaued after years of growth
The use of digital technology has had a long stretch of rapid growth in the United States, but the share of Americans who go online, use social media or own key devices has remained stable the past two years, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center data. The shares of US adults who say they use the internet, use social media, own a smartphone or own a tablet computer are all nearly identical to the shares who said so in 2016.

Tribal Broadband: Few Partnerships Exist and the Rural Utilities Service Needs to Identify and Address Any Funding Barriers Tribes Face
In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission estimated that 35 percent of Americans living on tribal lands lack broadband service compared to 8 percent of Americans overall. Various federal programs support increasing broadband deployment in unserved areas, including tribal lands. Tribes can form partnerships with private sector companies and others to deploy broadband infrastructure on tribal lands. The US Government Accountability Office was asked to provide information on these partnerships.

Digital Divide Plays Role in Credit Invisibility
Creditworthy consumers can face difficulties accessing credit if they lack a credit record that is treated as "scorable" by widely used credit scoring models. These consumers include those who are "credit invisible," meaning that they do not have a credit record maintained by one of the nationwide consumer reporting agencies (NCRAs). They also include those who have a credit record that contains either too little information or information that is deemed too old to be reliable.