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If the First Amendment’s protections against government intrusion are a core tenet of American democracy, what happens when the chief regulators of speech are private technology companies? What is protected, who gets to decide, and what are the implications for our democracy?

The Founders created a representative republic rather than a direct democracy, designed to slow down deliberation so that majorities could rule based on reason rather than passion. But in the age of Facebook and Twitter, new social media technologies have unleashed populist passions and accelerated public discourse to warp speed, creating the very mobs, demagogues, echo ch...

In a well-functioning democracy, people do not live in echo chambers or filter bubbles; rather, citizens are exposed to myriad ideas and perspectives even if not their own. Constitutional scholar Cass Sunstein suggests that our current obsession with social media and our online friend groups narrow the scope of the kinds of daily and serendipitous interactions that might o...

Platforms like Twitter and Facebook set the stage for a promising digital revolution, providing tools that helped foster global friendships, let new voices be heard, and served as the ultimate democratizing force for information. But critics argue that rather than uniting and informing, social media deepens social and political divisions and erodes trust in the democratic...

One in two girls say toxic beauty advice on social media causes low self-esteem, and seven in ten have felt better after unfollowing idealized beauty content. This research — and wider conversations surrounding social media use and its impacts on teens’ mental wellness — make this conversation more urgent than ever. Join creative and cultural expert Jess Weiner for #DetoxY...

This session considers the importance of trust, and a healthy distrust, in the well-being of a democracy and the role of the press in this equation drawing on the report of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy released Feb. 5, 2019 titled, “Crisis in Democracy: Renewing Trust in America.” What measures should local journalism, social media, and the public ta...

Americans aren’t dumb—at least individually—but something changed in the last ten years that made the country-as-a-whole stupid in an unprecedented way. And yes, it was social media. What was once a place to share cute kid pics became a place to score hits on enemies and undermine institutional trust, and the viral nature of social media empowered the far political extreme...

George Soros said social media platforms are the largest threat to democracy. Marc Benioff said we should regulate them like tobacco. Why? Every day, platforms like Facebook and YouTube point their supercomputers at two billion people’s minds to capture their attention, and in the process create social harms that include digital addiction, amplifying genocide, political po...

Readers, viewers, and subscribers want and need accurate news and information, but as we attempt to navigate among publishers and platforms and networks, who is ultimately responsible for telling us the truth? Who should be held accountable for information that is inaccurate, intentionally misleading, or straight-up fake? And what can media and information organizations do...

A large, unsettling question looming among Washington regulators, lawmakers, and now state Attorney’s General across the US is whether the time has come to break up the big five: Facebook, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Apple. Have these powerful tech companies, once the darlings of the start-up community not twenty years past, become so dominant that they are stifling competiti...

Technology has revolutionized the way we see and share beauty. From street style rocking luxury fashion houses to the changes in how and what we purchase, social media is disrupting the world of fashion. How does having the world at our fingertips make fashion more accessible and democratic? And in the process – how are we changing the ways in which we express ourselves cr...

Modern campaigns combine psychology, data, analytics, and technology to persuade and mobilize voters. The smartest campaign teams try to be one step ahead of the voters they’re targeting, even as the 24-hour news cycle and the social media echo chamber move constantly to keep up with this unprecedented election. This session engages political scientists, experts, and campa...

Cybersecurity is increasingly a major concern of modern life, coloring everything from the way we vote to the way we drive to the way our health care records are stored. Yet online security is beset by threats from nation-states and terrorists and organized crime, and our favorite social media sites are drowning in conspiracy theories and disinformation. How do we reset th...

After The Atlantic ran a cover story with the headline “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation of Kids?” a spate of stories and opinion pieces followed. The media was flooded with rants in comments sections, a former Facebook exec warned that social media is ripping apart our society, and Apple investors formally asked the company to take measures that would prevent iPhon...

As humans, we have an inherent and intense desire for connection. Social media and our always-on devices have simultaneously fulfilled and thwarted this desire, so what comes next as artificially intelligent companions become even more integrated into our lives? In this interactive conversation, two tech journalists will explore and demonstrate the technology that wants to...

The public optimism that came with the launch of social media a decade ago has settled into a wariness that we might instead face a long, grueling daily fight for truth and facts in the face of unrelenting, automated disinformation online. As the 2020 elections gear up, how should our country face the threat from Twitter bots and Facebook trolls? What responsibility should...

We are increasingly living in different realities of news, politics, and information — a trend that’s undermining the shared foundation of “truth” necessary for proper functioning of society. At risk are public health, elections, and democracy itself. But America’s “fake news” problem actually runs much deeper. What are the roots of our broken information ecosystems, who i...