The Media & Democracy program seeks to understand the evolving relationship between media, technology, and politics. Through research development workshops, public events, and a variety of publications, Media & Democracy incubates and catalyzes new research and situates the present moment of technological and political change in broader historical, cultural, and political contexts.
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The Media & Democracy program is generously supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the Democracy Fund; the Ford Foundation; the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation; the Rita Allen Foundation; and Reid Hoffman.
Ways of Working
The Media & Democracy program encourages scholarship about understudied phenomena at the intersection of media, technology, and politics. These two-day workshops are composed of interdisciplinary and cross-sector groups that afford scholars the rare opportunity to give and receive intensive feedback and seed a variety of outputs from peer-reviewed manuscripts to public events.
The Media & Democracy program organizes public events to connect academics, journalists, and technologists in conversation with each other and with the broader public to enrich shared understanding about the role of media and technology in public life.
Publications that emerge from Media & Democracy workshops inform diverse audiences about the nature of politics in an increasingly digital world. Through our workshops, we support rigorous research, working to accelerate academic publishing timelines and to facilitate a variety of forms of public scholarship.
Our Work
In pursuit of broader public understanding and a public interest internet, MediaWell collects and synthesizes research on how to mitigate false, misleading, or hateful narratives online, build resilient democratic institutions, and empower communities to inform themselves.
The Media & Democracy program hosts public events which bring together academics, journalists, and technologists in conversation with each other and with the broader public to enrich shared understanding about the role of media and technology in public life.
Center-right political parties occupy a precarious position in liberal democracies. On the one hand, their core identity and policy positions tend to align with economic elites. On the other hand, center-right parties must compete in democratic elections where majorities matter.
Research AMP, a customizable platform for academics who want to foster collaborations, bridge disciplines, and communicate their work, is the first to unite free and open source tools already well known in the scholarly community—Zotero, WordPress, and PressForward—into one platform.
What has happened to media policy in the United States, and what needs to happen next?
The Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust project is focused on helping health communicators engage in trust-building ways when discussing vaccine efficacy and other difficult topics online.
Publications
People
News & Events
Digital Threats to Democracy: Comparative Lessons and Possible Remedies
Two-day Virtual Workshop: “The Conservative Dilemma: Digital Surrogate Organizations and the Future of Liberal Democracy”
A virtual panel on “Whither Conservatism? The State of the Right,” in collaboration with the Center for Brooklyn History
Social Media and Democracy: Assessing the State of the Field and Identifying Unexplored Questions
Media, Technology, and Democracy in Historical Context
Media & Democracy at ICA 2019
