Samuel Woolley, Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Schools of Journalism and Information, made several comments for an article titled “BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans” at Spectrum News. A BBC news reporter created fake social media accounts of 5 Americans to track and better understand how information, and particularly disinformation, spreads as well as its impact on American politics. Professor Woolley argues that “The BBC experiment can be valuable, but only shows part of how algorithms work, a mystery that largely evades people outside of the tech companies.”
“Algorithms also take cues from comments that people make on social media or in their interactions with friends — both things that BBC’s fake Americans don’t do,” he said. If you would like to read more about Professor Woolley’s criticisms and the implementation of the experiment, the article can be found here.
Samuel Woolley, Assistant professor of journalism and Distinguished Scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, recently commented on an article in ABC News entitled “Anonymous users are dominating right-wing discussions online. They also spread false information.” The article addresses political dialogue ahead of the presidential information in November. “With these types of accounts, there’s an allure of...
Strauss Distinguished Scholar Samuel Woolley recently published his book Manufacturing Consensus: Propaganda in the Era of Automation & Anonymity which analyzes social media and emerging tech to show how propaganda has infiltrated modern society. Woolley shows how social media, with its anonymity and capacity for automation, allows a wide variety of groups to build the illusion of popularity through computational...
Samuel Woolley, Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Schools of Journalism and Information made several comments for an article titled “Why You Need To Think Carefully When You Post About Russia And Ukraine On Social Media” at Grazia. When a humanitarian crisis like Russia’s attack on Ukraine occurs, many people’s first reaction is to search for information and provide...