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Edit wars! Examining networks of negative social interaction
Network of all reverts done in the English language Wikipedia within one day (January 15, 2010). Read the full article for details.While network science has significantly advanced our understanding of...
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Can we predict electoral outcomes from Wikipedia traffic?
2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump in a residential backyard near Jordan Creek Parkway and Cody Drive in West Des Moines, Iowa, with lights and security cameras. Image by Tony Webster (Flickr)....
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Should there be a better accounting of the algorithms that choose our news...
The Facebook Wall, by René C. Nielsen (Flickr).A central ideal of democracy is that political discourse should allow a fair and critical exchange of ideas and values. But political discourse is...
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Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: The US Election
This is the first post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought...
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Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: Fake News and Filter Bubbles
This is the second post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought...
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Estimating the Local Geographies of Digital Inequality in Britain: London and...
Small area estimation techniques allow us to estimate Internet use in small geographies in Britain: the first attempt to estimate Internet use at any small-scale level. Read the full article. Despite...
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Exploring the world of digital detoxing
The new (old) inbox. Camp Grounded tries to build up attendees’ confidence to be silly and playful, with their identities less tied to their work persona — in a backlash against Silicon Valley’s...
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Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: Reality, Augmented Reality and...
This is the third post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out...
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Tackling Digital Inequality: Why We Have to Think Bigger
Outcomes of the many schemes financed by the government to address digital inequalities are rarely uniformly positive or transformative for the people involved. Image: iPad by Sean MacEntee (Flickr)....
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What Impact is the Gig Economy Having on Development and Worker Livelihoods?
There are imbalances in the relationship between supply and demand of digital work, with the vast majority of buyers located in high-income countries (pictured). See the full article for details. As...
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Psychology is in Crisis: And Here’s How to Fix It
“Psychology emergency” by atomicity (Flickr). Concerns have been raised about the integrity of the empirical foundation of psychological science, such as low statistical power, publication bias (i.e....
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Internet Filtering: And Why It Doesn’t Really Help Protect Teens
There is equivocal to strong evidence that household-level Internet filtering does not reduce the chance of adolescents having recent aversive online experiences. Image: Paul Walsh / Flickr CC BY-NC-SA...
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Why we shouldn’t believe the hype about the Internet “creating” development
It’s about time. However, despite enthusiasm, there is a lack of academic consensus about the impacts of digital connectivity on economic development. Image: Nicolas Friederici. Vast sums of money have...
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Exploring the world of self-tracking: who wants our data and why?
Benjamin Franklin used to keep charts of his time spent and virtues lived up to. Today, we use technology to self-track: our hours slept, steps taken, calories consumed, medications administered. But...
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Did you consider Twitter’s (lack of) representativeness before doing that...
Twitter data have many qualities that appeal to researchers, but are probably not suitable for research where representativeness is important. Image: Bernard Goldbach (Flickr). Twitter data have many...
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Governments Want Citizens to Transact Online: And This Is How to Nudge Them...
A randomized control trial that “nudged” users of a disability parking scheme to renew online showed a six percentage point increase in online renewals. Image: Wendell (Flickr). In an era when most...
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Should citizens be allowed to vote on public budgets?
Image: a youth occupation of Belo Horizonte to present and discuss different forms of occupation of urban space, by upsilon (Flickr CC BY-SA). There is a general understanding that public...
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We should look to automation to relieve the current pressures on healthcare
Image by TheeErin (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), who writes: “Working on a national cancer research project. This is the usual volume of mail that comes in two-days time.” In many sectors, automation is...
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How do we encourage greater public inclusion in Internet governance debates?
Reading of the NetMundial outcome document, by mikiwoz (Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0) The Internet is neither purely public nor private, but combines public and private networks, platforms, and interests. Given...
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We aren’t “rational actors” when it come to privacy — and we need protecting
We are increasingly exposed to new practices of data collection. Image by ijclark (Flickr CC BY 2.0). As digital technologies and platforms are increasingly incorporated into our lives, we are exposed...
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Has Internet policy had any effect on Internet penetration in Sub-Saharan...
The last decade has seen a rapid growth of Internet access across Africa, although it has not been evenly distributed. Cameroonian Cybercafe by SarahTz (Flickr CC BY 2.0). There is a consensus among...
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Is Left-Right still meaningful in politics? Or are we all just winners or...
Theresa May meets European Council President Donald Tusk in April, ahead of the start of Brexit talks. Image: European Council President (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) The Left–Right dimension — based on the...
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How useful are volunteer crisis-mappers in a humanitarian crisis?
Impromtu tent cities set after an earthquake measuring 7 plus on the Richter scale rocked Port au Prince Haiti on January 12, 2009. Image: United Nations Development Programme (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)...
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Should adverts for social casino games be covered by gambling regulations?
Lord of the Rings slot machines at the Flamingo, image by jenneze (Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0). Unlike gambling played for real money, “social casino games” generally have no monetary prizes. Social casino...
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Using Open Government Data to predict sense of local community
Advocates hope that opening government data will increase government transparency, catalyse economic growth, address social and environmental challenges. Image by the UK’s Open Data Institute....
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Social media and the battle for perceptions of the U.S.–Mexico border
The U.S.–Mexico border to be the location of an annual legal flow of economic trade of $300 billion each year, the frontier of 100 years of peaceful coexistence between two countries, and the point of...
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Could Voting Advice Applications force politicians to keep their manifesto...
To what extent do VAAs alter the way voters perceive the meaning of elections, and encourage them to hold politicians to account for election promises? Image: ep_jhu (Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0) In many...
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Our knowledge of how automated agents interact is rather poor (and that could...
Wikipedia uses editing bots to clean articles: but what happens when their interactions go bad? Image of “Nomade”, a sculpture in downtown Des Moines by Jason Mrachina (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Recent...
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What explains variation in online political engagement?
Sweden is a leader in terms of digitalization, but poorer municipalities struggle to find the resources to develop digital forms of politics. Image: Stockholm by Peter Tandlund (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)...
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How ready is Africa to join the knowledge economy?
Changes in the ways knowledge is created and used are driving economic and social development worldwide. Ugandan school by Brian Wolfe (Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0). “In times past, we searched for gold,...
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What are the barriers to big data analytics in local government?
Many local governments have reams of data (both hard data and soft data) on local inhabitants and local businesses. Image: Chris Dawkins (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). The concept of Big Data has become...
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We should pay more attention to the role of gender in Islamist radicalization
The process of radicalization still lacks clarity, and relies on theorizing that is rife with assumptions. Image of flowers left at London Bridge in June 2017, by Gerry Popplestone (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND...
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How policy makers can extract meaningful public opinion data from social...
Social media analysis can provide insight into the mobilization processes of stakeholders in response to government actions. Image of No-TAV protestors by Darren Johnson (Flickr: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). The...
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Does Twitter now set the news agenda?
To what extent is the traditional media influenced by politicians’ Twitter posts? [Original tweet] The information provided in the traditional media is of fundamental importance for the policy-making...
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Cyberbullying is far less prevalent than offline bullying, but still needs...
Schools and parents play an important role in educating children about cyberbullying. Credit: Pasco County Schools (Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0). Bullying is a major public health problem, with systematic...
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Open government policies are spreading across Europe — but what are the...
The rhetoric of innovation and openness is bipartisan at the national level in Europe. Crowd celebrating the election victory of moderniser Emmanuel Macron, by Lorie Shaull (Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0). Open...
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Digital platforms are governing systems — so it’s time we examined them in...
Digital platforms strongly determine the structure of local interactions with users; essentially representing a totalitarian form of control. Image: Bruno Cordioli (Flickr CC BY 2.0). Digital platforms...
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Exploring the Darknet in Five Easy Questions
Darknet marketplaces are typically set up to engage in the trading of illicit products and services, and are considered criminal in most jurisdictions. Image: Dennis Yip (Flickr). Many people are...
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Introducing Martin Dittus, Data Scientist and Darknet Researcher
We’re sitting upstairs, hunched over a computer, and Martin is showing me the darknet. I guess I have as good an idea as most people what the darknet is, i.e. not much. We’re looking at the page of...
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Does Internet voting offer a solution to declining electoral turnout?
Electronic voting in Brussels. © European Union 2014 – European Parliament. e-voting had been discussed as one possible remedy for the continuing decline in turnout in Western democracies. In their...
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Censorship or rumour management? How Weibo constructs “truth” around crisis...
On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions killed 173 people and injured hundreds at a container storage station at the Port of Tianjin. Tianjin Port by Matthias Catón (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). As...
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Why we shouldn’t be pathologizing online gaming before the evidence is in
There are active debates surrounding Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD), however, a new study suggests that it may not, in itself, be robustly associated with important clinical outcomes. Internet-based...
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Could Counterfactuals Explain Algorithmic Decisions Without Opening the Black...
Algorithmic systems (such as those deciding mortgage applications, or sentencing decisions) can be very difficult to understand, for experts as well as the general public. Image: Ken Lane (CC BY-NC...
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Habermas by design: designing public deliberation into online platforms
Advocates of deliberative democracy have always hoped that the Internet would provide the means for an improved public sphere. But what particular platform features should we look to, to promote...
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Making crowdsourcing work as a space for democratic deliberation
There are a many instances of crowdsourcing in both local and national governance across the world, as governments implement crowdsourcing as part of their open government practices aimed at fostering...
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How can we encourage participation in online political deliberation?
Political parties have been criticized for failing to link citizen preferences to political decision-making. But in an attempt to enhance policy representation, many political parties have established...
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In a world of “connective action”— what makes an influential Twitter user?
A significant part of political deliberation now takes place on online forums and social networking sites, leading to the idea that collective action might be evolving into “connective action”. The new...
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Call for Papers: Government, Industry, Civil Society Responses to Online...
We are calling for articles for a Special Issue of the journal Policy & Internet on “Online Extremism: Government, Private Sector, and Civil Society Responses”, edited by Jonathan Bright and...
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Bursting the bubbles of the Arab Spring: the brokers who bridge ideology on...
Online activism has become increasingly visible, with social media platforms being used to express protest and dissent from the Arab Spring to #MeToo. Scholarly interest in online activism has grown...
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Can “We the People” really help draft a national constitution? (sort of..)
As innovations like social media and open government initiatives have become an integral part of the politics in the twenty-first century, there is increasing interest in the possibility of citizens...
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