Stanford Internet Observatory
Stanford Internet Observatory "is a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on social media." They seek to "translate our research discoveries into training and policy innovations for the public good."
Stanford Internet Observatory is behind the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project.
About
Verbatim from the Stanford Internet Observatory:[1]
- No area of society has avoided disruption by new internet technologies. Democracy, media, education… these fields will face continued upheavals as we deal with the impact of billions of people having access to both high-quality information and disinformation on demand.
- Unfortunately, the political and social sciences have been slow to build their capabilities to study the negative impact of technology, partially due to a lack of data access, information processing resources and individuals with the necessary backgrounds to sift through exabytes of data. For centuries, physicists and astronomers have coordinated resources to build massive technological infrastructure to further their field. With infinitely expanding data and content, researchers need infrastructural capabilities to research this new information frontier.
- The Stanford Internet Observatory is a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on social media. Under the program direction of computer security expert Alex Stamos, the Observatory was created to learn about the abuse of the internet in real time, to develop a novel curriculum on trust and safety that is a first in computer science, and to translate our research discoveries into training and policy innovations for the public good.
- By providing researchers across Stanford with cutting edge data analytics and machine learning resources we will unlock completely unforeseen fields of research. We envision a world where researchers do not limit themselves to the data that is easy to access, but instead dive into the toughest and most important questions by leveraging the capabilities of the Stanford Internet Observatory.
Team
As of March 30, 2023, the Stanford Internet Observatory lists the following individuals on their "team":[2]
Staff
- Jeff Hancock, Faculty Director
- Alex Stamos, Director
- Elena Cryst, Deputy Director
- Renee DiResta, Research Manager
- Shelby Grossman, Research Scholar
- David Thiel, Chief Technologist
- Riana Pfefferkorn, Research Scholar
- Dan Bateyko, Special Projects Manager
- John Perrino, Policy Analyst
- Karen Nershi, Postdoctoral Scholar
- Ronald Robertson, Postdoctoral Scholar
- Tongtong Zhang, Postdoctoral Scholar
Students
- Chris Giles, Graduate Research Assistant
- Ilari Papa, Graduate Research and Course Assistant
- Eli Wald, Graduate Research Assistant
Virality Project
According to their website, the Virality Project is "a global study aimed at understanding the disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis."[3]
"In January 2020, the Stanford Internet Observatory expanded this project in collaboration with colleagues at New York University, the University of Washington, the National Council on Citizenship, and Graphika."[4]
2020 Election 'Disinformation'
The Stanford Internet Observatory published a book through their Election Integrity Partnership titled "The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election" which claimed that misinformation led to distrust in the 2020 Presidential Election and called for "whole-of-society" approach, including actions that could be taken by the federal government, to combat so-called "mis- and disinformation".[5],[6]
- "On January 6, 2021, an armed mob stormed the US Capitol to prevent the certification of what they claimed was a “fraudulent election.” Many Americans were shocked, but they needn’t have been. The January 6 insurrection was the culmination of months of online mis- and disinformation directed toward eroding American faith in the 2020 election.
- US elections are decentralized: almost 10,000 state and local election offices are primarily responsible for the operation of elections. Dozens of federal agencies support this effort, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security, the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense. However, none of these federal agencies has a focus on, or authority regarding, election misinformation originating from domestic sources within the United States. This limited federal role reveals a critical gap for non-governmental entities to fill. Increasingly pervasive mis- and disinformation, both foreign and domestic, creates an urgent need for collaboration across government, civil society, media, and social media platforms.
- The Election Integrity Partnership, comprising organizations that specialize in understanding those information dynamics, aimed to create a model for whole-of-society collaboration and facilitate cooperation among partners dedicated to a free and fair election. With the narrow aim of defending the 2020 election against voting-related mis- and disinformation, it bridged the gap between government and civil society, helped to strengthen platform standards for combating election-related misinformation, and shared its findings with its stakeholders, media, and the American public. This report details our process and findings, and provides recommendations for future actions.
Authors were listed as:
References
- ↑ Launching the Virality Project (Accessed March 30, 2023)
- ↑ Team (Accessed March 30, 2023)
- ↑ Launching the Virality Project (Accessed March 30, 2023)
- ↑ Memes, Magnets, and Microchips (Accessed March 30, 2023)
- ↑ ABSTRACT: The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election (Accessed March 30, 2023)
- ↑ FINAL REPORT: The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election (Accessed March 30, 2023)