THE INTERNET DEMOCRACY INITIATIVE

A platform for positive change in an interconnected world

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

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

Amazon’s recommendations are getting a little too creepy

Hear Christo Wilson’s take on the issue in Vox with Adam Clark Estes.

“There may be an Amazon tracker lurking on the page, monitoring what you’re doing, and that’s how you can potentially have these kinds of freaky advertising,” Wilson told me.

To combat misinformation, start with connection, not correction

NPR relies on research from IDI affiliate, Briony Swire-Thompson, to share six ways to combat misinformation:

“We just don’t have the time, the cognitive resources or even the motivation to literally fact-check every piece of information that comes our way,” says Briony Swire-Thompson, director of the Psychology of Misinformation Lab at Northeastern University.

Harassed? Intimidated? Guidebook offers help to scientists under attack

Hear from Rebekah Tromble in Nature and learn more about the Researcher Support Consortium.

“It’s universities and the academic institutions that have the primary responsibility to act,” says Rebekah Tromble, who leads the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University in Washington DC, and has herself experienced harassment because of her professional work. “They are the employers, and frankly it’s the type of public-interest scholarship that they are incentivizing that puts scholars at risk.”

Elections Listening Newsletter

Tune in to the Election Listening Newsletter by IDI’s Jason Radford. Each week, get a summary in your inbox of the trends in the online conversation real Americans are having about the U.S. election. In addition, view a dashboard where you can see these data for yourself.

Where does the data come from, you ask? We use Brandwatch to summarize the conversation being had by 1.8 million US voters on X. If you want to find out more about the data, the dashboard, or this work, check out the FAQ on the dashboard. If you have any questions, direct them to the projects’ director Dr. Jason Radford j.radford@northeastern.edu.

Tweet no harm: Offer solutions when alerting the public to voter suppression efforts

Voter suppression was a major issue during the 2018 U.S. Midterm elections. Civil rights organizations, advocacy groups, and celebrities used Twitter to urgently warn voters about potential problems at the polls. However, new research from IDI’s Katherine Haenschen shows, in an effort to raise awareness, these messages had the potential to negatively impact key measures of democratic health. Tweets that highlight voter suppression without a solution depress confidence in elections across all party groups, suggesting that solely warning people about problems at the polls without concrete actions they can take in response may do more harm than good. In addition, tweets highlighting voter suppression increase democratic legitimacy among Republicans relative to Democrats, suggesting that the former see such efforts as beneficial. 

Upcoming 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: TBD
Location: TBD

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.

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.  

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