Archive

  1. Paul Resnick

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    Paul Resnick is the Michael D. Cohen Collegiate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, where he directs the Center for Social Media Responsibility.

    Resnick was a pioneer in the field of recommender systems (sometimes called collaborative filtering) and reputation systems. Recommender systems guide people to interesting materials based on evaluations from other people. Reputation systems are recommender systems for people and organizations; the expectation of shared evaluations creates incentives for good behavior.

    The GroupLens system he helped develop was awarded the 2010 ACM Software Systems Award. His articles have appeared in Scientific American, Wired, Communications of the ACM, The American Economic Review, Management Science, and many other venues. His 2012 MIT Press book (co-authored with Robert Kraut), was titled “Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-based Social Design”.

    His current research focuses on large-scale empirical measurements of desirable and undersirable online behaviors, and the development of tools and algorithms that reduce affective polarization.

  2. Noah Giansiracusa

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    Noah Giansiracusa (PhD in math from Brown University) is an associate professor of mathematics at Bentley University, a business school near Boston. After publishing the book How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News in July 2021 (about which Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer said, “It’s a joy to read a book by a mathematician who knows how to write… There is no better guide to the strategies and stakes of this battle for the future”), Noah has gotten more involved in public writing and public speaking and policy discussions concerning data-driven algorithms and their role in society. He’s appeared on CNN live and BBC radio, and written for a range of outlets including Washington Post, Scientific American, TIME, Barron’s, Boston Globe, Wired, Slate, and Ms. Magazine.

    Noah is currently working on a second book, called Robin Hood Math (Riverhead Books), that helps readers of all backgrounds use math to navigate life and take back some of the power that techies and quants have in today’s economy. At RSM, he hopes to shed light on the murky ad tech ecosystem that funds so much of the internet–including fake news sites–by taking a close look at the hidden algorithmic auctions companies like Google run to place ads across millions of sites in a matter of milliseconds.

  3. Allison Stanger

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    Allison Stanger is Middlebury Distinguished Endowed Professor; Co-Director (with Danielle Allen), GETTING-Plurality Research Network, Harvard University; founding member of the Digital Humanism Initiative (Vienna); and an External Professor and Science Board member at the Santa Fe Institute. Stanger’s next book, Who Elected Big Tech?, is under contract with Yale University Press.

    Stanger’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Wired. She is the author of Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump (Yale University Press, 2019) and One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2009). She is a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Stanger is the co-editor (with Hannes Werthner et. al.) of Introduction to Digital Humanism: A Textbook (Springer, 2024), which is open access, and co-editor (with W. Brian Arthur and Eric Beinhocker) of Complexity Economics (SFI Press, 2020).

    Stanger has been called to testify before Congress on six occasions (by both Republicans and Democrats). She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. She majored in Mathematics as an undergraduate and also has graduate degrees in Soviet Studies and Economics.

  4. Marshall Van Alstyne

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    Marshall Van Alstyne (@InfoEcon; BA Yale; MS, PhD MIT) is the Questrom Chair of IS at Boston University and a Digital Fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. His work explores how ICT affects firms, innovation, and society with an emphasis on multi-sided platforms. Work or commentary have appeared in journals such as Science, Nature, Management Science, American Journal of Sociology, Strategic Management Journal, Information Systems Research, MISQ, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. He is coauthor of the international bestseller Platform Revolution and has made significant contributions to information economics and strategy as co-developer of the theory of “two-sided” markets. His work has received more than 25,000 citations, a dozen academic awards, and ranks among the top 2% for scientific influence globally. Rajk László College awarded him the Herbert Simon prize for research impact. Thinkers 50 named him one of the top management thinkers globally. Marshall is a husband and dad, who loves dogs, exercise, travel, and questions of governance.

  5. Eric Gilbert

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    Eric Gilbert is a Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He also has a courtesy appointment in CSE. Before coming to Michigan, he was on the faculty at Georgia Tech. At Michigan, he runs the comp.social lab, and is affiliated with SCRL, CSMR, MISC, and ESC. Dr. Gilbert is a sociotechnologist, with a research focus on building and studying social computing systems. His work has been supported by grants from the SSRC, Rockefeller Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Facebook, Samsung, Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, ARL, DARPA, and NSF.

    Dr. Gilbert’s work has been recognized with multiple best paper awards, as well as covered by outlets including Wired, NPR, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, the National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellowship, the Georgia Tech Young Faculty Award, the CSCW Service Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and the ICWSM Test of Time award. Dr. Gilbert is also a Distinguished Member of the ACM. He previously served as Program Chair and Steering Committee Chair for ICWSM, and as General Chair and Editor for CSCW. Prof. Gilbert is an alum of Teach For America (Chicago ’02), and holds a BS in Math & CS and a PhD in CS—both from UIUC.

  6. Myojung Chung

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    Myojung Chung is an assistant professor of journalism and media innovation at Northeastern University. Her primary research focuses on the intersection of digital media, misinformation, and policy making. She particularly aims to understand the spread and consequences of misinformation and develop effective countermeasures, ranging from fact-checking to literacy initiatives to regulatory measures.

    Her research has appeared in leading social science journals, including New Media & Society, Digital Journalism, Human Communication Research, and Computers in Human Behavior. Her work has also earned recognition with top paper awards from prominent conferences such as the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), and the National Communication Association (NCA).

    She is currently expanding her research to address the intricate balance between achieving the desired outcomes of interventions targeting misinformation while also minimizing unintended side effects. Additionally, she is exploring how enhancing algorithmic literacy can empower individuals to counter misinformation, hold algorithmic power accountable, and reduce digital divides in the post-truth era.

  7. AJ Christian

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    Aymar Jean “AJ” Christian is the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Media and Data Equity Lab at Northwestern University. He is the author of Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television (NYU Press, 2018) and the forthcoming Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture (MIT Press). He is the co-founder of the Emmy- and Webby-nominated platform OTV | Open Television. He has juried television and video for the Peabody Awards, Gotham Awards, and Tribeca Film Festival, among others. His work has been recognized by the MacArthur Foundation & Field Foundation (Leaders for a New Chicago, 2019), Variety (Top 50 Entertainment Instructor 2020 & 2021), Filmmaker (25 New Faces of Indie Film, 2018) NewCity (Film Leader 2017 & Film Hall of Fame 2020), Chicago magazine (New Power List, 2021) and Seed&Spark (Filmmaker to Watch 2018). Dr. Christian engages industry and community as part of his research. He regularly serves as executive producer of films and series, including Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines (Special Jury Award, 2024 Sundance Film Festival)

  8. David Craig

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    David Craig conducts research and teaches about media industries and creator culture, mapping the dimensions, distinctions, and disruption generated by these cultural industries economically, politically, and socio-culturally.

    He has published three books and over two dozen articles about the global creator culture and the Chinese equivalent (wanghong). He is the co-director of the dual master’s program in global media and communication in partnership with the London School of Economics, and was a visiting scholar at Shanghai Jiao Tong for six years.

    Prior, Craig was a Hollywood producer and executive responsible for over 30 films, TV programs, web series, documentaries, and stage productions that garnered over 70 Emmy, Golden Globe, and Peabody nominations.

  9. Lisa Austin

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    Lisa Austin is a Professor and Chair in Law and Technology at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and recently served as an Associate Director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI). In addition to her legal training, Lisa holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto.

    Her research focuses on privacy law, property law and legal theory, with an emphasis on the impacts of new technologies, the nature of the rule of law, and the boundaries between what the law considers private and public. Her privacy work has been cited numerous times by Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. In recognition of her influence on public policy, in 2017 she was one of the inaugural winners of the University of Toronto’s President Impact Award. At the University of Toronto, she has been a leader in creating an interdisciplinary community around privacy issues. She co-founded the IT3 Lab, a 3-year project that focused on innovative interdisciplinary research in law and engineering to make digital technologies more transparent and accountable.

    Her current research focuses on moving past privacy law to define and defend a broader idea of “data governance”, and to understand what kind of regulatory infrastructure we need in order to bring about the just and fair conditions of social legibility. She is particularly interested in examining the potential role of data intermediaries in mediating data access between parties in the data ecosystem, and their place in an overall theory of data governance.

    Twitter: @Lisa_M_Austin

  10. Meredith D. Clark

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    Meredith D. Clark, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and the Department of Communication Studies, and director of the Center for Communication, Media Innovation and Social Change at Northeastern University.

    Her research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power. Her first book, We Tried to Tell Y’all: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counter-Narratives, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Her research has been published in Communication and the Public; Communication, Culture & Critique; Electronic News; Journalism & Mass Communication Educator; Journal of Social Media in Society; New Media & Society; and Social Movement Studies.

    Clark is serving a four-year board leadership in the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC), and is an advisory board member of the Center for Critical Race + Digital Studies at NYU. She’s committed to the Lordeian practice of self-preservation as political warfare, and actively practices what Robin D.G. Kelley calls “radical imagination” – the view of seeing the world not as it is, but as it could be.

    Southern by the grace of God, Meredith now makes her home in JP with her husband, Willie, and their dog, Foster.

    Twitter: @MeredithDClark