Civil movements: Facebook and Twitter in the Arab Spring
2011 study by the Dubai School of Government on social networking access and usage during the region’s 2011 democracy movements.
Media
Research roundups, articles, explainers and tip sheets about how journalists report the news and how audiences consume it
Expert Commentary
Digital media education and online civic and political participation
2010 paper from the MacArthur Foundation’s Youth and Participatory Politics research project on youth media literacy and civic participation.
Expert Commentary
Political change in the digital age: The fragility and promise of online organizing
2010 paper by the Berkman Center at Harvard University on frameworks for evaluating activism in the Internet age, particularly in repressive environments.
Expert Commentary
Internet filtering and circumvention tool usage report
2010 report by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society on global usage of Web-based tools designed to circumvent Internet content filtering.
Expert Commentary
Arousal increases social transmission of information
2011 study by the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in Psychological Science on the underlying factors that drive people to share news
Expert Commentary
Information needs of communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age
2011 FCC report on the changing information environment in the 21st century and the challenges for both the press and democracy.
Expert Commentary
Cognitive control in media multitaskers
2009 study by Stanford University in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on mental effects of consumption of several media streams at once.
Expert Commentary
Making the news: Movement organizations, media attention and the public agenda
2010 study in American Sociological Review on characteristics of social advocacy organizations and their level of media attention.
Expert Commentary
Equal opportunity objectification? The sexualization of men and women on the cover of Rolling Stone
2011 study by SUNY-Buffalo published in Sexuality and Culture on depictions of women over time in a prominent, trend-setting media space in popular culture.
Expert Commentary
Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips
2011 study by Columbia, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard on effects of Internet search engines on human memory.
Expert Commentary