Articles from October 2020

Brian Ekdale

Brian Ekdale PI on $1M Grant to Study Social Media Algorithms and Extremism

Say you want to watch a news clip about Confederate monuments. You search YouTube and choose a video from what appears to be a randomly generated list of results. When the video ends, YouTube autoplays another video and recommends dozens more—and likely they’re the sort of thing you actually might watch, because that list is generated by algorithms that process your YouTube viewing history; the videos, tweets, and posts you’ve liked on social media; and your behavior elsewhere on the web. Seems helpful, right? What’s the problem?

Iowa Journalism Professor Melissa Tully receives grant to study health misinformation in Africa

Tully has been awarded funding from the Waterhouse Family Institute at Villanova University to test ways to address COVID-19 misinformation on social media in Kenya and Senegal.

A Student's View On "The Social Dilemma"

Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Senior Jack Martin reviews the new Netflix original documentary in which “tech experts sound the alarm on the dangerous human impact of social networking.”