Social Media and Politics Folgen

Craig Stadler, Founder and CEO of Petey Vid, guests to discuss the video search engine landscape and his alternative to the dominance of Google and YouTube: Petey Vid. Petey Vid offers users video content from 60+ different sources while not tracking users’ search history or IP addresses. We break down Craig’s motivations behind starting Petey Vid, how it’s search architecture is structured, and what separates it from YouTube.

Dr. Tarleton Gillespie, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Associate Professor of Communication at Cornell University, guests for our 100th episode!We revisit Dr. Gillespie's 2010 study "The Politics of Platforms" as well as discuss his latest book: "Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media."We discuss how social media companies strategically position themselves through discourse, the early adoption of social media by advertisers and political campaigns, and how content moderation shapes our interactions with platforms and politics. 

Dr. Alexander Stewart, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Houston, guests to discuss his research on "information gerrymandering," recently published in Nature. The study uses a voter game, mathematical modelling, social media data, and legislative data to examine how information asymmetries in social networks impact collective decision-making processes. We break down the study, and the implications of its findings for democracy. Read the full study, and check out the video showing information gerrymandering in action!