Samuel Woolley
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Taking the power back: How diaspora community organizations are fighting misinformation spread on encrypted messaging apps Open
We applied a mixed-methods approach with the goal of understanding how Latinx and Asian diaspora communities perceive and experience the spread of misinformation through encrypted messaging apps in the United States. Our study consists of …
Infrastructural platform violence: How women and queer journalists and activists in Lebanon experience abuse on WhatsApp Open
Technology-facilitated abuse and violence disproportionately affect marginalized people. While researchers have explored this issue in the context of public-facing social media platforms, less is known about how it plays out on more privat…
Embodied Political Influencers: How U.S. Anti-Abortion Actors Co-Opt Narratives of Marginalization Open
U.S. anti-abortion activists use social media to advocate for their cause. While influencer scholarship has proliferated within media studies, the advent of political influencers remains understudied, despite their ability to influence pub…
FEMINIST QUEEN OR CONSPIRACY THEORIST? FEMALE SPREADERS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH DISINFORMATION Open
Soon after the $2 decision overturned the federal right to abortion in the United States, an investigation revealed a disinformation campaign against birth control, driven by anti-abortion influencers. Disinformation targeting abortion and…
The political use of encrypted messaging applications: Evidence from southeast Asia and its implications for the global public sphere Open
Global Internet users face rising challenges with well-organized disinformation and propaganda campaigns. Scholars have studied this challenge by examining political communication over social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, an…
“On WhatsApp I say what I want”: Messaging apps, diaspora communities, and networked counterpublics in the United States Open
Critical scholars have assessed conceptualizations of “the public sphere” with a focus on contestation and plurality for several years. Recent studies comment on how specific social media platforms lend themselves to the creation of networ…
Messaging Apps: A Rising Tool for Informational Autocrats Open
Social media have caused adaptations to existing conceptualizations of democratization, democratic backsliding, and authoritarian hardening. One attempt to capture how social media may solidify authoritarian tendencies while maintaining th…
How pro- and anti-abortion activists use encrypted messaging apps in post-<i>Roe</i> America Open
In a post- Roe America, abortion-rights activists are scrambling to protect reproductive rights. Communication on open social media platforms like Facebook can now be used to prosecute those seeking an illegal abortion in a frightening ent…
Addressing Hateful and Misleading Content in the Metaverse Open
The metaverse in 2023In 2023 the tech sector has been defined by a spate of announcements about job cuts and reverberating concerns about artificial intelligence tools, particularly the chatbot ChatGPT (Alfonseca and Zahn 2023;Shankland 20…
Political Influencers on Social Media: An Introduction Open
Influencers are omnipresent on social media platforms. They occupy important digital real estate across a range of topical domains including beauty, fashion, and gaming. While researchers have contributed important work on the respective r…
How Disinformation on WhatsApp Went From Campaign Weapon to Governmental Propaganda in Brazil Open
The popular encrypted messaging and chat app WhatsApp played a key role in the election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. The present study builds on this knowledge and showcases how the app continued to be used in a governmen…
The Political Use of Encrypted Messaging Applications: Evidence from Southeast Asia and its Implications for the Global Public Sphere Open
This study relies on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with both makers and trackers of political content on EMAs in order to facilitate free-flowing conversations in which the insight of these interviewees can be uncovered. The inte…
The Political Use of Encrypted Messaging Applications: Evidence from Southeast Asia and its Implications for the Global Public Sphere Open
This study relies on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with both makers and trackers of political content on EMAs in order to facilitate free-flowing conversations in which the insight of these interviewees can be uncovered. The inte…
Audio misinformation on WhatsApp: A case study from Lebanon Open
Since 2019, Lebanon has witnessed sequential crises that have routinely spurred media attention. A great deal of misinformation has proliferated during these events, much of it spreading on WhatsApp. One format is particularly understudied…
Audio misinformation in Lebanon WhatsApp data Open
This spreadsheet is an anonymized version of our data, which includes the metadata from the sample describing the nature of the voice notes, the research protocol and codes used in our study.
Chat Apps and Cascade Logic: A Multi-Platform Perspective on India, Mexico, and the United States Open
Chat apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal are increasingly popular platforms for communication. Their sometimes-closed nature and encryption affordances present researchers, governments, and law enforcement with unique problems of a…
Platformed antisemitism on Twitter: Anti-Jewish rhetoric in political discourse surrounding the 2018 US midterm election Open
What does antisemitism look like in the context of political discussions on Twitter? In this article, we introduce the notion of platformed antisemitism. We first define it as a platform-agnostic concept, and then explore it through an exe…
Probabilistic social learning improves the public’s judgments of news veracity Open
The digital spread of misinformation is one of the leading threats to democracy, public health, and the global economy. Popular strategies for mitigating misinformation include crowdsourcing, machine learning, and media literacy programs t…
View article: Social Media and Democracy
Social Media and Democracy Open
This book is a state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the impact of digital technology on democracy. It will interest scholars, policymakers, and philanthropic organizations. This title is also available as Open Acc…
BLIND SPOTS OF INFORMATION OPERATIONS: OF MICRO PROPAGANDA, ALGORITHM GAMING & HOW TO PROFIT FROM IT Open
Techniques designed to manipulate public opinion and undermine information ecosystems are rapidly evolving while research lags behind technological innovation and strategic expertise. As a more sophisticated generation of information opera…
View article: Algorithms, bots, and political communication in the US 2016 election: The challenge of automated political communication for election law and administration
Algorithms, bots, and political communication in the US 2016 election: The challenge of automated political communication for election law and administration Open
Political communication is the process of putting information, technology, and media in the service of power. Increasingly, political actors are automating such processes, through algorithms that obscure motives and authors yet reach immen…
Automating power: Social bot interference in global politics Open
Over the last several years political actors worldwide have begun harnessing the digital power of social bots — software programs designed to mimic human social media users on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Increasingly, pol…
Creativity and critique: Gap analysis of support for critical research on Big Data Open
There is growing concern about the degree to which digital media and device networks can be used as tools of social control. This concern is expressed in at least two ways. First, social and computer scientists are finding ways to catalog …