As someone who learns in public online, I've written many hundreds of news, magazine, and literary articles, as well as many event liveblogs. My journalism has appeared in The Atlantic, the Guardian, PBS, WIRED, and FiveThirtyEight.
I currently blog at the Citizens and Technology Lab and on Medium.
This incomplete archive pulls from former blogs including MIT Center for Civic Media, my blog on Princeton's Freedom to Tinker site, my articles at The Atlantic, WIRED, and FiveThirtyEight, writings at the Emerging Scholars Network, posts for (formerly PBS) MediaShift, and articles for Global Voices.
I frequently blog public talks to broaden public exposure to scholarly ideas and to enable transparency toward powerful people's public statements. Liveblog posts, which summarize what was said, do not reflect my personal views.
(Global Voices)
When the two of us set out on our 550-mile bicycle storytelling adventure in the footsteps of the 1966 Farmworkers March, we were chasing a legend, seeking a conversation, and trying to understand a region that will shape the shared future of our planet.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Last week, CAT Lab made a submission to the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information on this issue for their “AI Accountability Policy Request for Comment.” Here it is:
(Global Voices)
Each time a community changes a street name, adds a new class to the curriculum, or publishes in a new language, they are making a statement about who belongs.
(Global Voices)
Even as farm workers and advocacy organizations report failures, support enforcement, and push for change, people still need to be safe at work. That is the question that brought the “chingonas” of the Central Valley together that Saturday night in Fresno after a long day of work.
(Global Voices)
In the hands of Melissa Montalvo and other journalists, journalism is a mirror for a community with the majority of Fresno’s population and a minority of its power.
(Global Voices)
When Randy Villegas explains the reasons not to live in California’s Central Valley, you can tell from his urgent enthusiasm that he’s about to convince you the opposite.
(Global Voices)
Renowned as the site of labor activist Cesar Chavez’s 1968 25-day hunger strike, The Forty Acres is slated for incorporation into a national park being considered by the US government.
(Global Voices)
When Francisco Gonzales moved to the town of Arvin, California from the Los Angeles suburbs in 2005, he was captivated by the mountain vistas, the green fields, and orange trees that surround the town. “I thought it would be clean,” he said, pointing to the small housing development where he had invested his retirement savings after decades working as a handyman. Then Francisco points to the oil derrick across the street from him and shrugs.
(Global Voices)
As we cycle the route of the 1966 Farmworkers March, we’ll be interweaving history with the stories of people who are shaping the future of California’s Central Valley today.
(Global Voices)
Bicycle tours tend to prioritize exquisite landscapes, but since our ride is also a journalistic exercise, we needed to adopt a different philosophy of route-making.
(Global Voices)
April 2, 2023, was the day I realized that bicycles are machines to visit alternative futures.
(Medium)
John Fleck may be the only law school professor with a favorite ditch.
(WIRED)
The field of public health has transformed medicine, yet failed the most vulnerable. This trajectory can be avoided.
(Medium)
When local politician Alyssa Cisneros took her daughter to Foothills Nature Preserve in Palo Alto on July 4th 2020, she was hoping to celebrate Independence Day from one of the region’s most beautiful overlooks.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Why Have Algorithms Stopped Promoting Black History Month?
(Medium)
How Twitter misleads us about how many people have left — and what to do about itSocial feeds are engines for distorting social understanding.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can we build a trustworthy Internet that serves the common good, based on high quality scientific knowledge?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can students make a difference on systemic issues in higher education like persistent inequality?
(Knight First Amendment Institute)
When Elon Musk fired Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, public policy, trust and safety lead, at the start of an avalanche of firings and departures, the Tesla CEO’s actions were reminiscent of another automaker in crisis. After General Motors closed its Flint, Michigan, factories in 1997, it posted signs on the empty buildings: “Demolition Means Progress.” Even if Twitter limps along after its recent self-immolation, we can expect to see more and more signs of something like urban decay on the platform. As a scientist who has studied online safety and discrimination for more than a decade, I’m deeply worried about the safety risks of half-failing infrastructure.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Imagining Lasting Change on Content Moderation: A Citizens Agenda appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post New Directions in Trust and Safety – Lightning Talks at TrustCon 2022 appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post What Can Companies Do For Moderator Well-Being?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Two Years at the Trust and Safety Professionals Association – TrustCon 2022 appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post TrustCon: A Global Conference Dedicated to Trust and Safety Professionals appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can we put emerging legal issues affecting platform Trust and Safety Teams into the long arc of tech regulation?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can Trust and Safety teams learn from public health when imagining and deciding on interventions?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Creating a Community of Support for Trust and Safety Professionals – Charlotte Wilmer at TrustCon appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Medium)
Reflections on home and place as I depart for a year at StanfordLast Saturday, I cycled from Ithaca to Chittenango and back, my last ride before moving to California for a year-long fellowship at CASBS.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Can clear institutional policies against harassment reduce its prevalence in a community?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How are the boundaries of “good” science shape who gets to do science?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
What do smart contracts provide that legal contracts don’t?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Call for Collaboration: Seeking Researchers to Develop New Studies with Communities appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Path Independent: Public-Interest Research Engineering & Data Science & RightsCon appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Are you an engineer or data scientist working on software infrastructures and processes for independent, public-interest research on technology and society?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Test & Protest: A Conversation With Consumer Reports Digital Lab appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(Medium)
Marking what we have lost and what might be next. Last Month, Ed Yong asked in The Atlantic why American society and government could not or would not acknowledge the magnitude & urgency of nearly a million lives lost to COVID.
(Medium)
How Art Advances Tech & Policy — Chris Csikszentmihalyi at CornellHow can artists contribute to technology policy, and how can artists engage the public in shared knowledge-making about science and technology?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can researchers do right by communities when collaborating on research?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
In March 2022, the U.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Have you ever gotten a finger squeeze from a pulse oximeter?
(Medium)
How can we reach for excellence and the common good when we stand on the shoulders of enduring sin?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can independent researchers reliably detect bias, discrimination, and other systematic errors in software-based decision-making systems?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post Do Automated Welcomes Improve Newcomer Retention on French Wikipedia?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
The post We’re Recruiting PhD Students! appeared first on Citizens and Technology Lab.
(FiveThirtyEight)
Academia is a place where, to use the language of sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, there is racism without racists. By that, we mean that although most people prefer to think that they or their colleagues are good people who would not intentionally discriminate, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that racism plays an important role in the structure and function of academic institutions.
(FiveThirtyEight)
Despite all of the talk about increasing diversity, it does not seem like universities have made much progress — at least when it comes to the diversity of the tenure-track and tenured faculty. With Neil Lewis Jr. and Elan Hope. Graphics by Jasmine Mithani.
(Open Letter)
We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with Laura Edelson and NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy team, who were punished by Facebook on August 2nd for shedding light on the company’s impact on democracy (co-written with Rebekah Tromble and Susan Benesch).
(Lawfare)
How can platforms effectively combat misinformation with steps short of takedowns? As our forthcoming research demonstrates, providing warnings to users can make a big difference, but not all warnings are created equal. Article by Ben Kaiser, Jonathan Mayer, J. Nathan Matias
(Medium)
How can junior faculty advance a public mission when it’s not always part of the job?
(Inside Higher Ed)
Focusing only on scientific advancement keeps us from addressing the kinds of problems that motivated us to pursue science in the first place, write Adam Seth Levine and J. Nathan Matias.
(Medium)
What do stories do in the world, and can they move us to behave in pro-social ways?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can we foster meaningful dialogue and create shared knowledge in a digital world shaped by algorithms?
(Medium)
How can organizations grow participation in science that protects our world?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How Did Fixing Tractors Become Copyright Violation?
(Medium)
How can researchers overcome stigmas in science toward communities of color?
(Medium)
How racism defines which students are seen as creative, and which students are seen as threatsLEGO WeDo.
(Medium)
In a crisis, we wrongly think that talk is cheap and action matters most.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
What impact do the copyright industry’s robot lawyers have on freedom of expression?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
What can the public do to change unjust collection and use of data?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can we advance human understanding on the internet when so many people are left out of the conversation?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can we address online harms such as revenge porn?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
What is data feminism?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Marginalized communities online often face disruption from outsiders.
(ESN)
Are Christianity and social justice incompatible?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Can saying “thank you” make online communities stronger & more inclusive?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
On Wikipedia, mentoring newcomers, reviewing vandalism, and discussing decisions can be meaningful if emotionally-draining work.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can researchers contribute to action and public understanding during fast-moving events like elections, pandemics, and other crises?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Feeds are everywhere today, from social media to law enforcement.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How do people and algorithms engage in discrimination?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can we escape the trap of surveillance capitalism to imagine, achieve, and govern a better internet?
(Medium)
When 70 people died in her hometown, Dr.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
When research is funded by companies that people no longer trust, we have a problem.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
How can citizens work for a world where digital power is guided by evidence and accountable to the public?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
At our Community Research Summit, the CAT Lab team and other researchers discussed and developed studies to help Wikipedia thrive. By working alongside Wikipedians from eighteen communities – from Azerbaijani to Women in Red – we developed dozens of possible research ideas for the future.
(Medium)
How did Black Lives Matter come into being?
(Medium)
Help us advance human understanding by studying this massive dataset of headline A/B testsRemember these headlines?
(Medium)
Maybe your community has been affected by technology and you want to understand and reshape those impacts. Or you’re in the tech industry and know how few problems can be solved with engineering alone. Maybe you studied the social sciences and want to understand digital environments. Above all, you are looking for a way to create usable knowledge that matters in people’s lives.
(Medium)
Last Thursday, August 15, I heard for the first time about Joi Ito’s business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the ties between Epstein and the MIT Media Lab, which occurred after his appalling crimes were already known. In my research, I study ways to protect women and other vulnerable people online from abuse and harassment. I cannot with integrity do that from a place with the kind of relationship that the Media Lab has had with Epstein. It’s that simple. Read more about my decision in this post.
(Princeton)
How can we design remedies for content “violations” online?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Our citizen science study in a 13.
(Princeton)
How the American public understand gerrymandering and collect data that could lead to fairer, more representative voting districts across the US?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Volunteer moderators create, support, and control public discourse for millions of people online.
(Princeton)
Rather than removing the need for trust, blockchain offers a new architecture of trust, according to Kevin Werbach, today’s speaker at CITP.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Are you a reddit moderator interested to reduce harassment or manage the spread of unreliable news in your community?
(Medium)
Why I’m excited to start as an assistant professor and what it means for the research nonprofit I startedDuring my academic job search, I have been reflecting on the tremendous opportunity and responsibility for faculty to contribute to society, scholarship, and students (read more here).
(Princeton)
Why do different people sometimes get different articles about the same event, sometimes from the same news provider?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Our director’s transition to Cornell University and how it will affect CivilServant.
(Princeton)
In a time when U.S. tech employees are organizing against corporate-military collaborations on AI, how can the ethics and incentives of military, corporate, and academic research be more closely aligned on AI and lethal autonomous weapons?
(GV Community)
Do expressions of gratitude make online communities stronger and more welcoming?
(Princeton)
Online platforms, which monitor and intervene in the lives of billions of people, routinely host thousands of experiments to evaluate policies, test products, and contribute to theory in the social sciences.
(Medium)
4 Tips for Citizens & Journalists About Covering Extremist EventsToday is the day you learned that yes, it can happen here too.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
We tested Facebook’s ad screeners and some were too strict.
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Our live blog of a talk by Janet Vertesi, on what it means to have a principled rejection of technology.
(TheAtlantic)
When Facebook removed Jo Brower’s fundraiser for disabled veterans just hours after approving it this September, she was surprised and confused.
(Princeton)
How can we build respect into products and systems?
(Princeton)
Smart contracts are powerful virtual referees for holding money and carrying out agreed-on procedures in cases of disputes, but they can’t guarantee privacy and have strict scalability limitations.
(Medium)
After living car-free for a year in Princeton, I’m glad we chose to skip the morning trafficIs it possible to live car-free in Princeton?
(Citizens & Tech Lab)
Choosing the right statistical model can affect the life and well-being of millions or even billions of people.
(Medium)
I believe my best contribution to a flourishing internet is through public-interest research and teaching in a university settingAs society discovers the power and risks from digital communications, how can democracies manage this power for the common good?
(Princeton)
Last semester, I taught a Princeton undergrad/grad seminar on the craft, politics, and ethics of behavioral experimentation.
(Princeton)
How can we manage the politics and ethics of large-scale online behavioral research?
(Medium)
Anyone can test the effect of tech design changes in our lives.
(Medium)
Memories aren’t made to last. With no apologies to Journey, and much gratitude to TheInspiroBot, Rochelle LaPlante, Andromeda Yelton, Caroline Sinders, Sydette Harry, Renee Teate, Gina Neff, and Andrew Losowsky, for egging me on last July.
(Medium)
Since writing this, I’ve supported a field experiment on this question, and I now think the jury’s out on the effect of downvoting on conflict and behavior.
(Princeton)
What will artificial intelligence mean for society, jobs, and the economy?
(Princeton)
What technology risks are faced by people who experience intimate partner violence?
(Medium)
Behavioral nudges are good at maximizing a specific outcome; can machine learning nudge people to make better decisions?
(Princeton)
How are predictive models transforming how we think about child protection, and how should we think about the role of such systems in a democracy?
(Princeton)
How are data science and open science movement transforming how researchers manage research ethics?
(Princeton)
This Monday, Nikki Bourassa and I organized a van from Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society to visit the American Museum of Tort Law, which I have decided to call the American Museum of Exploding Cars and Toys that Kill You.
(Medium)
Ralph is of course the founder of the museum.
(Medium)
Everyone in tech should visit this museum, and so should you.
(Princeton)
What does it mean for public sector actors to implement algorithms to make public services to be more efficient?
(Princeton)
As Princeton thaws from under last week’s snow hurricane, I’m taking a moment to reflect on my first four months in the place I now call home.
(Princeton)
How does AI apply to mental health, and why should we care?
(MIT)
Law enforcement sometimes argue that they need backdoors to encryption in order to carry out their mission, while cryptographers like Bruce Schneier describe the public cybersecurity risk from backdoors and say that the “technology just doesn’t work that way.
(MIT)
As latino communities face increased pressure and risks from US immigrations and customs, how are latinos of faith organizing to protect the vulnerable while also including white Christians in migrant-led efforts for change?
(ESN)
How does God use the migration process to extend His grace in its many forms?
(MIT)
Today at the MIT Media Lab’s Defiance conference, Jonathan Zittrain facilitated a conversation about the story of Galileo and what it means for our understanding of research and activism that violates deeply-held boundaries.
(MIT)
Conspiracy thinking can take over our understanding of the world and immobilize our ability to create a better future.
(MIT)
How is the FBI thinking about its relationship with bio hacking communities as they attempt to support innovation while also limit the risks from DIY biotech?
(TheAtlantic)
James Berri traveled three hours to Sacramento earlier this month for his first Pride parade, one of hundreds of annual LGBTQ celebrations across America.
(MIT)
What kinds of online harassment do women in Pakistan face, and what can we learn from Pakistan for our efforts to protect people around the world?
(MIT)
What is the state of the “empiricism agenda” to understand “what works” in policy?
(MIT)
What role does social media play in supporting collective action, and how do people organize to change social media systems themselves?
(MIT)
Online harassment has been an enduring and evolving social concern for over 40 years, yet many of the most urgent empirical questions for public well-being and freedom remain unexplored.
(MIT)
How are mass collaboration and open data changing the ways we do social science?
(ESN)
How have Christian teachings on gratitude added basic ideas to the founding of Enlightenment institutions and the modern world we live in?
(ESN)
What does it mean to be part of a global religion, and how can we make sense of the diverse missions, values, and politics of that belonging?
(ESN)
How can Christians decide when to be involved in conflict, and how can they know when to stop?
(ESN)
Too many people go to gradschool who shouldn’t be there, and many people who have the gifts and calling don’t get in or even start.
(ESN)
What is it like to be a photojournalist, and why would a Christian choose journalistic photographic work over advocacy?
(TheAtlantic)
Facebook, you may have noticed, turned into a rainbow-drenched spectacle following the Supreme Court’s decision Friday that same-sex marriage is a Constitutional right.
(TheAtlantic)
When her husband lost his job in 2010, Kristy Milland realized how important the Internet had become to her family’s survival.
(ESN)
Reading Through the creatures Thou hast made Show the brightness of Thy glory, Be eternal Truth displayed In their substance transitory, Till green Earth and Ocean hoary, Massy rock and tender blade Tell the same unending story — “We are Truth.
(PBS MediaShift)
For the past three years, I’ve been using methods to identify gender in large datasets to support research, design, and data journalism, supported by the Knight Foundation, with an amazing group of collaborators.
(TheAtlantic)
Join us on Twitter this Monday for a live Q&A with cartoonist and graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel, author of this month’s #1book140 read, Fun Home.
(TheAtlantic)
In celebration of Banned Book Month at @1book140, join our Twitter book club to read the classic sci-fi fantasy novel and illicit classic A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
(TheAtlantic)
Lists of censored books and outrageous rationales for censorship have spread across Twitter for this Banned Books Week.
(ESN)
How can I extend welcome to newcomers in my university and neighborhood?
(PBS MediaShift)
How do you party with a group of people across four continents?
(ESN)
Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
(TheAtlantic)
Join our Twitter book club to read the graphic memoir Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, one of more than 20 fantastic nominations for our LGBTQ month at @1book140.
(TheAtlantic)
1book140 is more than an online book club.
(MIT Center for Civic Media)
How do our designs change when we start emphasizing people and community and not just the things they do for us? Over the next year of my research, I’m exploring acknowledgment and gratitude, basic parts of online relationships that designers often set aside to focus on the tasks people do online.
(TheAtlantic)
Neil Gaiman is the first author we read on our Twitter book club @1book140.
(TheAtlantic)
Yesterday, our Twitter Book Club held a live Q&A with Rachel Cantor, author of A Highly Unlikely Scenario, our July book.
(TheAtlantic)
“Felix was always asking things of the Brazen Head.
(TheAtlantic)
After a month of discussion on healthy, ethical food at #1book140, our Twitter book club’s July pick is a dystopian fast-food space comedy with A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor.
(TheAtlantic)
At the beautiful observatory where H.
(TheAtlantic)
June is food month at #1book140, our Twitter book club! Help us choose by suggesting great fiction and nonfiction in the comments section.
(PBS MediaShift)
A few years ago, a close friend (not at MIT) asked for my advice.
(TheAtlantic)
But I will beat them hollow.
(TheAtlantic)
Middlemarch, by George Eliot, has been called “the greatest English novel,” labeled “the death knell for a book club,” and, according to Virginia Woolf, who loved it, “one of the few novels written for grown-up people.
(TheAtlantic)
Transitions in literary style from romanticism to realism in the late 19th century inflict finely calibrated essay agony on English students worldwide.
(TheAtlantic)
Random HouseJoin us this month to read Open City, by novelist Teju Cole.
(TheAtlantic)
Novels by African writers are popular at #1book140, our Twitter book club.
(TheAtlantic)
Dell PublishingIf our Twitter book club ever wrote a list of values, two ideas near the top would be democracy and diversity.
(TheAtlantic)
Little, Brown, and CompanyEleanor Catton calls her Man Booker Prize-winning novel an “astrological dance” within a “straightforward murder mystery.
(TheAtlantic)
Penguin”From the day my novel was published, I realised that now and forever more I was to be branded as the spy turned writer, rather than as a writer who, like scores of his kind, had done a stint in the secret world, and written about it.
(TheAtlantic)
New Press, Houghton Mifflin, Penguin, Harper Collins, Knopf, Random HouseFrom parties to prisons, narratives of a single place or remarkable journeys, the past year at our Twitter book club, @1book140, has sparked great conversations.
(TheAtlantic)
“If we live in a constant state of fear, can we remain human?
(TheAtlantic)
Random House; Harper Perennial; PenguinNovember is our month for the complex ethics of secrets, surveillance, and intrigue at @1book140, The Atlantic’s Twitter book club.
(PBS MediaShift)
How can we use data to improve our lives, our communities, and the world at large?
(PBS MediaShift)
Is there such a thing as Christian hacking?
(ESN)
“What does it mean for Christians to do social justice advocacy as if God is real and Jesus is risen?
(PBS MediaShift)
A few weeks ago, I received a fascinating package in the mail.
(MIT Center for Civic Media)
Most web applications are fundamentally egocentric. In this post, I describe ideas for changing that.
(PBS MediaShift)
A version of this post originally appeared on the MIT Center for Civic Media’s blog.
(MIT Center for Civic Media)
(PBS MediaShift)
Can high-resolution data and innovative technology help us create better representation of women in the news?
(MIT Center for Civic Media)
(PBS MediaShift)
Citizen journalism and social media have become major sources for the news, especially after the Arab uprisings of early 2011.
(MIT Center for Civic Media)
(Global Voices)
Around the world, an emerging group of language activists are recognizing that participatory digital media can play a part in engaging and encouraging the next generation of speakers of endangered and indigenous languages.
(Global Voices)
Jillian York (Global Voices and Electronic Frontier Foundation) starts off this session by asking participants if they think their government is monitoring their electronic communications.
(Global Voices)
Kennedy Kachwanya is chairman of the Blogger’s association of Kenya.
(Global Voices)
Is Citizen Media many movements, or one movement, and how can we work together?
(Global Voices)
Why do these countries have less of a voice?
(PBS MediaShift)
If anything sums up this year’s MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference, it was MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito’s argument for creativity and risk, encouraging us to pursue visions that we do not yet know how to describe.
(MIT Center for Civic Media)
@natematias