Podcast appearances and mentions of Philip M Napoli

During his recent campaign, President-elect Donald Trump made various promises consistent with the ongoing effort by Elon Musk and MAGA Republicans to target researchers and civil society groups that study issues such as propaganda and mis- and disinformation. Today's guest has looked deeply at this effort, conducting an analysis of over 1800 pages of primary documents to identify the strategic approaches employed by these parties, including the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and the outcomes and broader democratic implications of the campaign. Philip M. Napoli is the James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy, the Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research for the Sanford School at Duke University. His findings are published in a new paper The Information Society titled "In pursuit of ignorance: The institutional assault on disinformation and hate speech research."

Suddenly everyone is an expert on platform governance but how do we situate the current widespread public concern around how privatized commons are ruled? Where is the moral brightline for the researchers and critics of big tech when the financial incentives to join the very same companies are high? How do we understand platform governance in a longer history where big tech corporations refused access to researchers and many felt the harm was something that would happen much further down the road? Should we resurrect the analogy to media (TV, Radio, Print) to better understand what regulatory approaches are useful? We discuss these questions and more with Robyn Caplan.Robyn Caplan is a Researcher at Data & Society, and a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University (ABD, advisor Philip M. Napoli) in the School of Communication and Information Studies. She conducts research on issues related to platform governance and content standards. Her most recent work investigates the extent to which organizational dynamics at major platform companies impacts the development and enforcement of policy geared towards limiting disinformation and hate speech, and the impact of regulation, industry coordination, and advocacy can play in changing platform policies.IG + Twitter: @WeBeImaginingSupport Us: On PatreonHost: J. Khadijah Abdurahman, Ilan MandelMusic: Drew LewisLinks for the Episode:Who Controls the Public Sphere in an Era of AlgorithmsWhen Media Companies Insist They're Not Media Companies and Why It Matters for Communications Policy by Philip M. Napoli, Robyn CaplanContent or Context Moderation?: Artisanal, Community Reliant and Industrial ApproachesListening to Black Women: The Innovation Tech Can't Crack

Aaron Freiwald, Managing Partner of Freiwald Law and host of the weekly podcast, Good Law | Bad Law, is joined by Professor Philip M. Napoli, of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, to discuss new age media, social media regulation and content filtering, the history of social media, and the First Amendment.   In today’s conversation, Aaron and Phil talk about the relationship between the media and democracy, the “Trump years” and our former President’s unprecedented use of social media platforms, disinformation and misinformation, journalism, the marketplace of ideas, and much more. Should there be regulations on social media? Why? How? And moreover, who? Phil and Aaron delve into the history of social media, the notion of “big internet,” curation algorithms, Section 230, libel and slander, as well as “cancel culture,” audiences, and individual liberties.   Dr. Napoli is the James R. Shepley Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy; a Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research in the Sanford School of Public Policy; Professor of the International Comparative Studies Program; and an Associate of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley (B.A.), Boston University (M.S.) and Northwestern (Ph.D.), Professor Napoli’s areas of expertise are media and democracy and his research focuses on media institutions, media regulation, and policy. He has provided formal and informal expert testimony on these topics to government bodies, such as the U.S. Senate, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Congressional Research Service.   Professor Napoli’s research has received awards from the National Business and Economics Society, the Broadcast Education Association, the International Communication Association, and the National Communication Association. His research has been funded by organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and the Center for American Progress. Professor Napoli is a firm believer in engaged scholarship, and has engaged in research consultations and collaborations with a wide range of organizations, including the Federal Communications Commission, the New America Foundation, Free Press, the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council, the Center for Creative Voices in Media, the National Association of Broadcasters, and more. He has been interviewed in media outlets such as the NBC Nightly News, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Politico, and National Public Radio.   Listen now!   To learn more about Professor Napoli, and to access a full list of his publications, please click here. To check out Professor Napoli’s book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age, please click here. To explore Duke’s Science and Society Initiative, please click here. To read the January article from Duke Today, “LESSONS FROM THE U.S. CAPITOL RIOT: Duke faculty discuss domestic terrorism, Trump, disinformation and social media,” please click here.   Host: Aaron Freiwald Guest: Philip M. Napoli   Follow Good Law | Bad Law: YouTube: Good Law | Bad Law Facebook: @GOODLAWBADLAW Instagram: @GoodLawBadLaw Website: https://www.law-podcast.com

Data & Society and Stanford PACS host a special book launch: One of the most far-reaching transformations in our era is the wave of digital technologies rolling over—and upending—nearly every aspect of life. Work and leisure, family and friendship, community and citizenship have all been modified by now-ubiquitous digital tools and platforms. Digital Technology and Democratic Theory looks closely at one significant facet of our rapidly evolving digital lives: how technology is radically changing our lives as citizens and participants in democratic governments.To understand these transformations, this book brings together contributions by scholars from multiple disciplines to wrestle with the question of how digital technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democracy and democratic theory. As expectations have whiplashed—from Twitter optimism in the wake of the Arab Spring to Facebook pessimism in the wake of the 2016 US election—the time is ripe for a more sober and long-term assessment. How should we take stock of digital technologies and their promise and peril for reshaping democratic societies and institutions? To answer, this volume broaches the most pressing technological changes and issues facing democracy as a philosophy and an institution.Speaker BiosRobyn Caplan | @robyncaplanRobyn Caplan is a Researcher at Data & Society, and a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University (ABD, advisor Philip M. Napoli) in the School of Communication and Information Studies. She conducts research on issues related to platform governance and content standards. Her most recent work investigates the extent to which organizational dynamics at major platform companies impacts the development and enforcement of policy geared towards limiting disinformation and hate speech, and the impact of regulation, industry coordination, and advocacy can play in changing platform policies.Her work has been published in journals such as First Monday, Big Data & Society, and Feminist Media Studies. She has had editorials featured in The New York Times, and her work has been featured by NBC News THINK and Al Jazeera. She has conducted research on a variety of issues regarding data-centric technological development in society, including government data policies, media manipulation, and the use of data in policing.Lucy Bernholz | @p2173Lucy Bernholz is a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and Director of the Digital Civil Society Lab. She has been a Visiting Scholar at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and a Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, the Hybrid Reality Institute, and the New America Foundation. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including the annual Blueprint Series on Philanthropy and the Social Economy, the 2010 publication Disrupting Philanthropy, and her 2004 book Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets: The Deliberate Evolution. She is a co-editor of Philanthropy in Democratic Societies (2016, Chicago University Press) and of the forthcoming volume Digital Technology and Democratic Theory. She writes extensively on philanthropy, technology, and policy on her award winning blog, philanthropy2173.com.She studied history and has a B.A. from Yale University, where she played field hockey and captained the lacrosse team, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.Rob Reich | @robreichRob Reich is professor of political science and, by courtesy, professor of philosophy at the Graduate School of Education, at Stanford University. He is the director of the Center for Ethics in Society and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review), both at Stanford University. He is the author most recently of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values (edited with Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz, University of Chicago Press, 2016). He is also the author of several books on education: Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and Education, Justice, and Democracy (edited with Danielle Allen, University of Chicago Press, 2013). His current work focuses on ethics, public policy, and technology, and he serves as associate director of the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence initiative at Stanford. Rob is the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the Walter J. Gores award, Stanford's highest honor for teaching. Reich was a sixth grade teacher at Rusk Elementary School in Houston, Texas before attending graduate school. He is a board member of the magazine Boston Review, of Giving Tuesday, and at the Spencer Foundation. More details at his personal webpage: http://robreich.stanford.eduSeeta Peña GangadharanDr Seeta Peña Gangadharan is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work focuses on inclusion, exclusion, and marginalization, as well as questions around democracy, social justice, and technological governance. She currently co-leads two projects: Our Data Bodies, which examines the impact of data collection and data-driven technologies on members of marginalized communities in the United States, and Justice, Equity, and Technology, which explores the impacts of data-driven technologies and infrastructures on European civil society. She is also a visiting scholar in the School of Media Studies at The New School, Affiliated Fellow of Yale Law School's Information Society Project, and Affiliate Fellow of Data & Society Research Institute.Before joining the Department in 2015, Seeta was Senior Research Fellow at New America's Open Technology Institute, addressing policies and practices related to digital inclusion, privacy, and “big data.” Before OTI, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in Law and MacArthur Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. She received her PhD from Stanford University and holds an MSc from the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.Seeta's research has been supported by grants from Digital Trust Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and U.S. Department of Commerce's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.Archon Fung | @ArfungArchon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton University Press). He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and his Ph.D. in political science from MIT.

Philip M. Napoli has been thinking about algorithmic news and social media feed curation for quite some time, as he acknowledges in his new book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Initially this topic was not as pressing as it now seems to be, but Napoli has been exploring this issue and and trying to figure out how it might work in terms of regulation – self, governmental, or otherwise – for a while. Social Media and the Public Interest approaches this complex and multi-layered issue from a host of perspectives, leading the reader into the broader discussion through a history of social media, but that history itself is positioned within a brief but important history of the internet and the world wide web. At the same time, the book covers a lot of important ground in thinking about the First Amendment, how journalism operates in the age of social media and an otherwise fluid and changing environment for traditional media. Napoli gets at questions that often lurk at the back of our considerations of social media, not only about what we experience in our use of these platforms, but also how we may, unconsciously, consume the information and news that is presented to us through these “not quite journalistic” entities. This is a fascinating book that opens up a lot of penetrating questions about our social media environment, how we think about journalism, what the role of regulation might be in terms of both technology and media, and how all these threads intersect within politics. This book will be of interest to a wide array of readers from a host of backgrounds, and, of course, to anyone who has an interest in understanding the media environment in which we all live. Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012).

Philip M. Napoli has been thinking about algorithmic news and social media feed curation for quite some time, as he acknowledges in his new book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Initially this topic was not as pressing as it now seems to be, but Napoli has been exploring this issue and and trying to figure out how it might work in terms of regulation – self, governmental, or otherwise – for a while. Social Media and the Public Interest approaches this complex and multi-layered issue from a host of perspectives, leading the reader into the broader discussion through a history of social media, but that history itself is positioned within a brief but important history of the internet and the world wide web. At the same time, the book covers a lot of important ground in thinking about the First Amendment, how journalism operates in the age of social media and an otherwise fluid and changing environment for traditional media. Napoli gets at questions that often lurk at the back of our considerations of social media, not only about what we experience in our use of these platforms, but also how we may, unconsciously, consume the information and news that is presented to us through these “not quite journalistic” entities. This is a fascinating book that opens up a lot of penetrating questions about our social media environment, how we think about journalism, what the role of regulation might be in terms of both technology and media, and how all these threads intersect within politics. This book will be of interest to a wide array of readers from a host of backgrounds, and, of course, to anyone who has an interest in understanding the media environment in which we all live. Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip M. Napoli has been thinking about algorithmic news and social media feed curation for quite some time, as he acknowledges in his new book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Initially this topic was not as pressing as it now seems to be, but Napoli has been exploring this issue and and trying to figure out how it might work in terms of regulation – self, governmental, or otherwise – for a while. Social Media and the Public Interest approaches this complex and multi-layered issue from a host of perspectives, leading the reader into the broader discussion through a history of social media, but that history itself is positioned within a brief but important history of the internet and the world wide web. At the same time, the book covers a lot of important ground in thinking about the First Amendment, how journalism operates in the age of social media and an otherwise fluid and changing environment for traditional media. Napoli gets at questions that often lurk at the back of our considerations of social media, not only about what we experience in our use of these platforms, but also how we may, unconsciously, consume the information and news that is presented to us through these “not quite journalistic” entities. This is a fascinating book that opens up a lot of penetrating questions about our social media environment, how we think about journalism, what the role of regulation might be in terms of both technology and media, and how all these threads intersect within politics. This book will be of interest to a wide array of readers from a host of backgrounds, and, of course, to anyone who has an interest in understanding the media environment in which we all live. Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip M. Napoli has been thinking about algorithmic news and social media feed curation for quite some time, as he acknowledges in his new book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Initially this topic was not as pressing as it now seems to be, but Napoli has been exploring this issue and and trying to figure out how it might work in terms of regulation – self, governmental, or otherwise – for a while. Social Media and the Public Interest approaches this complex and multi-layered issue from a host of perspectives, leading the reader into the broader discussion through a history of social media, but that history itself is positioned within a brief but important history of the internet and the world wide web. At the same time, the book covers a lot of important ground in thinking about the First Amendment, how journalism operates in the age of social media and an otherwise fluid and changing environment for traditional media. Napoli gets at questions that often lurk at the back of our considerations of social media, not only about what we experience in our use of these platforms, but also how we may, unconsciously, consume the information and news that is presented to us through these “not quite journalistic” entities. This is a fascinating book that opens up a lot of penetrating questions about our social media environment, how we think about journalism, what the role of regulation might be in terms of both technology and media, and how all these threads intersect within politics. This book will be of interest to a wide array of readers from a host of backgrounds, and, of course, to anyone who has an interest in understanding the media environment in which we all live. Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip M. Napoli has been thinking about algorithmic news and social media feed curation for quite some time, as he acknowledges in his new book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Initially this topic was not as pressing as it now seems to be, but Napoli has been exploring this issue and and trying to figure out how it might work in terms of regulation – self, governmental, or otherwise – for a while. Social Media and the Public Interest approaches this complex and multi-layered issue from a host of perspectives, leading the reader into the broader discussion through a history of social media, but that history itself is positioned within a brief but important history of the internet and the world wide web. At the same time, the book covers a lot of important ground in thinking about the First Amendment, how journalism operates in the age of social media and an otherwise fluid and changing environment for traditional media. Napoli gets at questions that often lurk at the back of our considerations of social media, not only about what we experience in our use of these platforms, but also how we may, unconsciously, consume the information and news that is presented to us through these “not quite journalistic” entities. This is a fascinating book that opens up a lot of penetrating questions about our social media environment, how we think about journalism, what the role of regulation might be in terms of both technology and media, and how all these threads intersect within politics. This book will be of interest to a wide array of readers from a host of backgrounds, and, of course, to anyone who has an interest in understanding the media environment in which we all live. Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip M. Napoli has been thinking about algorithmic news and social media feed curation for quite some time, as he acknowledges in his new book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Initially this topic was not as pressing as it now seems to be, but Napoli has been exploring this issue and and trying to figure out how it might work in terms of regulation – self, governmental, or otherwise – for a while. Social Media and the Public Interest approaches this complex and multi-layered issue from a host of perspectives, leading the reader into the broader discussion through a history of social media, but that history itself is positioned within a brief but important history of the internet and the world wide web. At the same time, the book covers a lot of important ground in thinking about the First Amendment, how journalism operates in the age of social media and an otherwise fluid and changing environment for traditional media. Napoli gets at questions that often lurk at the back of our considerations of social media, not only about what we experience in our use of these platforms, but also how we may, unconsciously, consume the information and news that is presented to us through these “not quite journalistic” entities. This is a fascinating book that opens up a lot of penetrating questions about our social media environment, how we think about journalism, what the role of regulation might be in terms of both technology and media, and how all these threads intersect within politics. This book will be of interest to a wide array of readers from a host of backgrounds, and, of course, to anyone who has an interest in understanding the media environment in which we all live. Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip M. Napoli has been thinking about algorithmic news and social media feed curation for quite some time, as he acknowledges in his new book, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Initially this topic was not as pressing as it now seems to be, but Napoli has been exploring this issue and and trying to figure out how it might work in terms of regulation – self, governmental, or otherwise – for a while. Social Media and the Public Interest approaches this complex and multi-layered issue from a host of perspectives, leading the reader into the broader discussion through a history of social media, but that history itself is positioned within a brief but important history of the internet and the world wide web. At the same time, the book covers a lot of important ground in thinking about the First Amendment, how journalism operates in the age of social media and an otherwise fluid and changing environment for traditional media. Napoli gets at questions that often lurk at the back of our considerations of social media, not only about what we experience in our use of these platforms, but also how we may, unconsciously, consume the information and news that is presented to us through these “not quite journalistic” entities. This is a fascinating book that opens up a lot of penetrating questions about our social media environment, how we think about journalism, what the role of regulation might be in terms of both technology and media, and how all these threads intersect within politics. This book will be of interest to a wide array of readers from a host of backgrounds, and, of course, to anyone who has an interest in understanding the media environment in which we all live. Lilly J. Goren is professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She co-edited the award-winning Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent years, a variety of funders have begun to invest substantially in efforts to assess the impact of media initiatives such as documentary films and journalism ventures. These efforts reflect a fundamental shift in how media performance is assessed (and whose assessments matter) in an environment of extreme audience fragmentation and increased challenges to monetizing media content. This presentation focuses on ongoing research that seeks to define and assess the field of media impact assessment. In addressing these issues, this analysis seeks to: Identify important points of distinction between contemporary notions of media impact and more traditional notions of media effects; Assess the methods and metrics being employed to assess media impact; Identify the key challenges and tensions inherent in such efforts. This presentation also illustrates that impact represents only one of a number of aspects of journalistic performance that are being converted to quantitative performance metrics. Related areas of ongoing research include efforts to assess the health of local media ecosystems and the quality of journalistic content. The broader implications of this wide-ranging transformation in how journalistic performance may be assessed will be considered. Philip M. Napoli (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is Professor of Journalism & Media Studies in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University, where he leads the Media and the Public Interest Initiative. His current research projects include an analysis of the functioning of the New York City information ecosystem during and after Hurricane Sandy (funded by Internews) and the News Measures Research Project (funded by the Democracy Fund and the Dodge Foundation).