AFFILIATE RESEARCH

The Facebook Algorithm’s Active Role in Climate Advertisement Delivery

By Piotr Sapiezynski | April 2024

Communication strongly influences attitudes toward climate change. In the advertising ecosystem, we can distinguish actors with adversarial stances: organizations with contrarian or advocacy communication goals towards climate action, who direct the advertisement delivery algorithm to launch ads in different destinations by specifying targets and campaign objectives. We present a 2 part study; part 1 is an observational study and part 2 is a controlled study. Collectively, they indicate that the advertising delivery algorithm could be actively influencing climate discourse, asserting statistically significant control over advertisement destinations, characterized by U.S. state, gender type, or age range. Further, algorithmic decision-making might be affording a cost advantage to climate contrarians.

 Learn More >>

Other Affiliate Research

A Case Study in an A.I.-Assisted Content Audit

A Case Study in an A.I.-Assisted Content Audit

This paper presents an experimental case study utilizing machine learning and generative AI to audit content diversity in a hyper- local news outlet, The Scope, based at a university and focused on underrepresented communities in Boston. Through computational text analysis, including entity extraction, topic labeling, and quote extraction and attribution, we evaluate the extent to which The Scope’s coverage aligns with its mission to amplify diverse voices.

AI Regulation: Competition, Arbitrage & Regulatory Capture

AI Regulation: Competition, Arbitrage & Regulatory Capture

The commercial launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 and the fast development of Large Language Models catapulted the regulation of Artificial Intelligence to the forefront of policy debates One overlooked area is the political economy of these regulatory initiatives–or how countries and companies can behave strategically and use different regulatory levers to protect their interests in the international competition on how to regulate AI.
This Article helps fill this gap by shedding light on the tradeoffs involved in the design of AI regulatory regimes in a world where: (i) governments compete with other governments to use AI regulation, privacy, and intellectual property regimes to promote their national interests; and (ii) companies behave strategically in this competition, sometimes trying to capture the regulatory framework.

Tags:

Contact Us

Are you interested in joining the IDI team or have a story to tell? reach out to us at j.wihbey@northeastern.edu