THE INTERNET DEMOCRACY INITIATIVE

A platform for positive change in an interconnected world

The Internet Democracy Initiative studies problems that have widespread information and social media implications. This initiative provides leadership in understanding the role of the internet in structuring democracy, society, and markets.

Our focus areas

The Imperative

How can the internet be a constructive force in society? The early days of the internet offered the promise of decentralized democratic transformation, social connection, easy access to high quality information, and a platform to diverse voices. While there are glimpses of these possibilities still, the internet today is strikingly centralized and dominated by relatively few gatekeepers, with society riven by polarization.

The bottom-up utopian vision of the 1990s has seemingly turned into a 2020s dystopia of misinformation and harassment, producing calls for aggressive top-down control by corporations and government. The objective of this initiative is to support rigorous research on the problems of the contemporary information ecosystem, and to evaluate the potential of interventions into and uses of the affordances of the internet to support connection and to empower democracy.

New Stories and Publications

Read more from our affiliates through their recent publications and news features

TikTok in a time of peril: American usage patterns and demographic trends

The Internet Democracy Initiative and the multi-institutional team at CHIP50 have published a new report on TikTok usage as we are days away from a decision being made on the app’s potential ban in the U.S. In analysing responses from over 33,000 survey participants over the past two months, the report details social media usage patterns and demographic trends. Ultimately, TikTok has emerged as a major challenger to the current Meta-dominated social media landscape, capturing about 10% of all attention of American users. In contrast, we estimate that Meta social media and instant messaging properties capture about 48%. Moreover, TikTok users skew far younger than for most other social media. TikTok is also used by more non-White respondents; people with a high school or less education, and moderately, if consistently, by more women than men, and Democrats than Republicans.

Read More

TikTok hopes Trump will offer it a lifeline as its ban deadline approaches

As inauguration day approaches, so too does the deadline for the U.S.’s banning of Tiktok. Read more about what this means for the app’s owners, users, and adveritsers with IDI’s John Wihbey and the National News Desk: “TikTok thrives on advertising dollars, just like all the other platforms, so if you’re an advertiser, the uncertainty is gonna start to spook you.”

Read More

Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Hear Tina Elassi-Rad on the newest episode of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape

Big data is ruling, or at least deeply infiltrating, all of modern existence. Unprecedented capacity for collecting and analyzing large amounts of data have given us a new generation of artificial intelligence models, but also everything from medical procedures to recommendation systems that guide our purchases and romantic lives. I talk with computer scientist Tina Elassi-Rad about how we can sift through all this data, make sure it is deployed in ways that align with our values, and how to deal with the political and social dangers associated with systems that are not always guided by the truth.

Listen Now

Meta’s move away from fact-checking could allow more false or misleading content, content moderation expert says

John Wihbey, an associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern University, says the policy changes could have downstream effects — not only in the U.S., but elsewhere around the world.

Read More

Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science

Read the new National Academies report on misinformation from IDI’s David Lazar and colleagues:

Our current information ecosystem makes it easier for misinformation about science to spread and harder for people to figure out what is scientifically accurate. Proactive solutions are needed to address misinformation about science, an issue of public concern given its potential to cause harm at individual, community, and societal levels. Improving access to high-quality scientific information can fill information voids that exist for topics of interest to people, reducing the likelihood of exposure to and uptake of misinformation about science. Misinformation is commonly perceived as a matter of bad actors maliciously misleading the public, but misinformation about science arises both intentionally and inadvertently and from a wide range of sources.

Read the article from Northeastern Global News

Read More

Catch up on all our Fall 2024 Events

September

Trust and Safety Research Conference

September 26-27

IDI affiliates will be presenting at Stanford’s Trust and Safety Research Conference.

  • Characteristics and Prevalence of Fake Social Media Profiles with AI-generated faces, Kai-Cheng Yang
  • Understanding Platform Users’ Algorithmic Knowledge, John Wihbey
  • Exploring the Interaction of Trust in Science and Vaccine Hesitancy, Pranav Goel
  • Where Do Election Deniers Get their News?, Hong Qu

October

Computation + Journalism Symposium

October 25-27

IDI will be hosting the 2024 C+J Symposium at Northeastern’s ISEC. For more information, visit our Events page and register.

October-December

Misinformation Speaker Series

Jason Reifler
Host: IDI
Date: October 17
Time: 11:00 AM EST
Location: Zoom Webinar

Arvind Narayanan
Date: Wednesday, November 20th
Time: 2 – 3 p.m.
Location: Zoom Webinar

Ceren Budak
Host: Shorenstein
Date: December 5
Time: 12 – 1 p.m.
Location: HKS campus (Starr Auditorium) & Zoom

Vish Viswanath
Host: IDI
Date: December 18
Time: 10 – 11 a.m.
Location: Northeastern campus (177) Huntington Ave & Zoom

Event Recap:

Internet and Society: The Trans-Atlantic Research Future

The May 2024 Internet Democracy Initiative Conference

In May 2024, the Internet Democracy Initiative hosted an Internet and Society Conference at the Northeastern University-London campus. Hear from the speakers as they discussed the role of the internet in structuring democracy, society, and markets with emphasis on areas that have widespread information and social media implications. Read the story on Northeastern Global News.

What we do

Collaborating across Northeastern’s interdisciplinary networks

The IDI is developing a clearinghouse of best practices and algorithms, and building a resource set for organizations around the world interested in defending democracy and its institutions.

Explore our network

Creating next-gen resources for industry and community

The Internet Democracy Initiative, building our NSF internet observatory, will study problems that have widespread information and social media implications.  

Read about the NIO

Building a more equitable, fair, and representative future.

The IDI will catalyze a multi-disciplinary community at Northeastern, including through nascent teams in Oakland and London

Meet our affiliates