Thread by @natematias

What can we learn from social/computational science about policies to govern coordinated actors in a world of overlapping platforms and media?

Yesterday, I summarized a few points on how to understand those actors. Tonight, let's take a closer look at the ecosystem.

Most content/behavior policy debates focus on individual platforms, because that's where governance happens. But we live in a *transmedia* world, where civic life spans many media forms

This term comes from @henryjenkins. You can read the history here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

An excellent case study in transmedia is @schock's (open access) Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets, which looks at the immigrant rights movement. The book illustrates a media ecology approach to understanding media practices linked to civic action mitpress.mit.edu/books/out-shad…

A network of *people* overlaps media ecosystems in any movement, as Internet scholars often observe. Most notably, @gilgul & co's "The Revolutions were Tweeted" details how social media, TV, & online news had a *symbiotic* relationship in the Arab Spring

ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc…

If we see digital policy as an ecosystem issue, we see flows of power that are resilient to single-platform policies. @wphillips49 *2015* book "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things," revealing the symbiotic relationship between mainstream media & hate

mitpress.mit.edu/books/why-we-c…

Here's how it works: people/groups who organize harm/violence take advantage of the democratic mission & revenue goals of media orgs. They say and do things that media feel obligated to cover, generating attention & revenue for firms, making trolls thrive

mitpress.mit.edu/books/why-we-c…

In the social sciences, you win awards for stating a problem clearly (and @wphillips49 won awards for that book). Whitney has gone a step further to publish guidelines for how media can cover extremists, antagonists, and manipulators: datasociety.net/library/oxygen…

In the story told by Gilad, Whitney, Sasha & others, transmedia enabled low-power actors to game the incentives of the media & gain outsized visibility/influence.

How do you make sense of a scenario where people who are already running things play a similar game? That's the US.

Sometimes, traditional institutions contribute to an ecosystem that causes harm. That's the debate over Radio Rwanda in the 1994 genocide, where radio shows encouraged violence. What were the effects? Strauss explains why the answer is complicated

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

If you want to read a cross-country analysis of how genocide comes to happen, beyond simplistic techno-determinist ideas about radio, see Strauss's 2018 book "Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa."

cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/978080147…

Back in the 2010s US:
1) people with institutional power have encouraged & amplified networks of hateful speech/behavior
2) media continued to be gamed

@YBenkler, Faris, @cyberhalroberts offered early documentation in their 2018 book Network Propaganda

global.oup.com/academic/produ…

If you want to know the state of knowledge about media ecosystems on the left & right in the US, @dfreelon, @alicetiara, & @kreissdaniel have a great summary in the Reviews section of Science that describes what we know *and* shares unresolved Qs

science.sciencemag.org/content/369/65…

This article explains the move to Telegram, Gab, Voat (and now Parler) in connection with organizing approaches in the American right going back to the 1930s. It also explains how ecosystems on the right contrast with the left.

What does this media ecosystems stuff have to do with tech policy?

It helps us understand:
- Why some are skeptical about the impact of a single ban
- How harmful groups can keep gaming the media even without social media
- How circumventable policies might still save lives

If no single platform's policies can successfully restrain a harmful ecosystem for long, then what do we do? One option is more coordination across platforms. @evelyndouek has written about this phenomenon in "The Rise of Content Cartels"

knightcolumbia.org/content/the-ri…

While I agree with Evelyn that secret, unaccountable policymaking by more companies does not do any favors for democracy or human rights, I think we need ecosystem approaches to solving ecosystem problems.

That was my argument in The Atlantic in 2015: theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

My favorite example of a cross-context, cooperative system of coordinated content moderation is The Block Bot (now Block Together), which has transparency, due process, and the beautiful idea of "propagating forgiveness." See @staeiou's paper here:

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

My research has documented cases of coordinated content moderation, where communities form networks like the ancient Delian League. To join & get protections from shared moderation, you agree to shared policies across the league and get a say in policies

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20…

Many people complain that tech firms waited to see what other firms did before taking action.

To a social scientist, that's not surprising. It's how people/institutions usually behave, and it's a powerful way for behaviors to spread across any network. sociology.stanford.edu/publications/t…

So far, I've answered Qs that focused on powerful actors, networks, and ecosystems who would use any tools available to organize harm.

"But you're a behavioral scientist!" you object. "Surely some policies could work on average reliably over time?" Tune in tomorrow.

Oh yes, for those of you who want to see where TV fits, @alexleavitt shared this paper by @_jenallen and co-authors that merges Nielsen & Comscore data to study how false/misleading information on TV connects relates to online media consumption

advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/14/e…

Update from @schock: Marscha Kinder is the origin of the term "Transmedia" cinema.usc.edu/directories/pr…

https://twitter.com/schock/status/1348973821597020162