Essays and Scholarship
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Essays and Scholarship
A Public Service Media Perspective on the Algorithmic Amplification of Cultural Content
An analysis of the cultural significance of music recommender systems
By Georgina Born & Fernando Diaz -
Essays and Scholarship
Recursive Press Freedom as the Capacity to Control and Learn From Mistakes
Toward a self-constituting, self-aware, self-monitoring, and self-correcting synthetic press in an era of generative artificial intelligence
By Mike Ananny -
Essays and Scholarship
The Other Press Clauses
State-level press protections could supplement the First Amendment's Press Clause
By Christina Koningisor -
Essays and Scholarship
From Bloggers in Pajamas to the Gateway Pundit
How government entities do and should identify professional journalists for access and protection
By Richard L. Hasen -
Essays and Scholarship
Reconstructing the First Amendment: Teaching Disenfranchised Perspectives on Press Freedom
A case for a reparative journalism approach to teaching the First Amendment and press freedom
By Meredith D. Clark -
Essays and Scholarship
Policing Press Freedom
A discussion of the limitations of press exceptionalism
By Hannah Bloch-Wehba -
Essays and Scholarship
The Right to Know
A case for a federal public trust for media
By Wesley Lowery -
Essays and Scholarship
Legal Foundations for Non-Reformist Media Reforms
A positive-rights paradigm for guaranteeing a universal press system
By Victor Pickard -
Essays and Scholarship
The Future of Press Freedom
An introduction to "The Future of Press Freedom," a project featuring contributions from nearly 30 of the nation’s leading legal and media studies scholars
By RonNell Andersen Jones & Sonja R. West -
Essays and Scholarship
Distorting the Press
An exploration of First Amendment tools that protect publicly subsidized journalism against state capture
By Heidi Kitrosser -
Essays and Scholarship
Innovation Policy and the Press
A survey of policy possibilities that could protect and sustain local news
By Christina Koningisor & Jacob Noti-Victor -
Essays and Scholarship
Recommenders With Values: Developing recommendation engines in a public service organization
An inside look at how the BBC develops its recommendation systems
By Alessandro Piscopo , Anna McGovern , Lianne Kerlin , North Kuras , James Fletcher , Calum Wiggins & Megan Stamper -
Essays and Scholarship
Voter Data, Democratic Inequality, and the Risk of Political Violence
How data is used to marginalize the poor during elections—and what can be done about it
By Bertrall Ross & Douglas Spencer -
Essays and Scholarship
Engagement, User Satisfaction, and the Amplification of Divisive Content on Social Media
Engagement-based algorithms often amplify divisive content and fail to meet user preferences. What's the alternative?
By Smitha Milli , Micah Carroll , Yike Wang , Sashrika Pandey , Sebastian Zhao & Anca Dragan -
Essays and Scholarship
Free Speech, Identity, and Power
Observations on the state of free speech from a longtime free speech advocate.
By Gara LaMarche -
Essays and Scholarship
Anonymity, Identity, and Lies
Contrary to assumptions about user identification in online contexts, anonymity can often be part of a healthy digital public sphere.
By Artur Pericles Lima Monteiro -
Essays and Scholarship
Algorithmic Displacement of Social Trust
The problem with social media isn’t problematic content alone—it’s the elimination of processes we rely on to guide our decisions and keep us informed.
By Benjamin Laufer & Helen Nissenbaum -
Essays and Scholarship
Bridging Systems: Open problems for countering destructive divisiveness across ranking, recommenders, and governance
How "bridging" can promote on- and offline social collaboration, productive deliberation, and trust
By Aviv Ovadya & Luke Thorburn -
Essays and Scholarship
It’s the Algorithm: A large-scale comparative field study of misinformation interventions
What different algorithmic interventions reveal about tackling misinformation
By Benjamin Kaiser & Jonathan Mayer -
Essays and Scholarship
Communicative Justice and the Distribution of Attention
When it comes to the digital public sphere, we can do better. But what exactly does better look like?
By Seth Lazar -
Essays and Scholarship
Teachable Agents for End-User Empowerment in Personalized Feed Curation
Empowering users to shape their own social media feeds
By Kevin Feng , David McDonald & Amy Zhang -
Essays and Scholarship
Algorithmic Amplification for Collective Intelligence
Social media promised a new, democratized, and digital public sphere. Algorithms can help us get there.
By Jason W. Burton -
Essays and Scholarship
After the Fall of the American Digital Empire
Between the U.S., China, and EU, the race for global technological dominance is intensifying.
By Anu Bradford -
Essays and Scholarship
The Myth of The Algorithm: A system-level view of algorithmic amplification
To understand how algorithms shape the internet, we must understand what algorithms really are.
By Kristian Lum & Tomo Lazovich -
Essays and Scholarship
The Algorithmic Management of Polarization and Violence on Social Media
How social media is designed has the potential to escalate conflict. It's becoming clear that platforms can do more to monitor their impact and discourage violence.
By Jonathan Stray , Ravi Iyer & Helena Puig Larrauri -
Essays and Scholarship
What’s in an Algorithm? Empowering Users Through Nutrition Labels for Social Media Recommender Systems
What if there were a way to measure and better understand social media platforms' algorithms? With "nutrition labels," there might be.
By Luca Belli & Marlena Wisniak -
Essays and Scholarship
How to Prepare for the Deluge of Generative AI on Social Media
A grounded analysis of the challenges and opportunities
By Sayash Kapoor & Arvind Narayanan -
Essays and Scholarship
Lies and the Law: An Introduction
Exploring how the law regulates or should regulate false and misleading speech
By Genevieve Lakier -
Essays and Scholarship
The Professional Price of Falsehoods
What role should professional organizations play in responding to lies and misinformation spread by those within their ranks?
By Quinta Jurecic -
Essays and Scholarship
Understanding Social Media Recommendation Algorithms
Towards a better informed debate on the effects of social media
By Arvind Narayanan -
Essays and Scholarship
Investigative Deception Across Social Contexts
Why intentional lies used to conduct undercover investigations are celebrated in some contexts and criminalized in others
By Alan K. Chen -
Essays and Scholarship
Protecting Public Knowledge Producers
Exploring the nature and value of government knowledge producers in our constitutional order and the legal, cultural, and political threats that they face
By Heidi Kitrosser -
Essays and Scholarship
Government Counterspeech
What leeway the government should enjoy to engage in counterspeech to combat misinformation or promote truthful discourse
By Jamal Greene -
Essays and Scholarship
What’s the Harm?
An interrogation of the societal impact of conspiracy theories and potential remedies
By Adam M. Enders & Joseph Uscinski -
Essays and Scholarship
Fake News, Lies, and Other Familiar Problems
A guide to thinking about the best way to navigate the contemporary crises of the American public sphere
By Sam Lebovic -
Essays and Scholarship
Presuming Trustworthiness
How the Supreme Court has abandoned once-positive assumptions about press speech, even while embracing the trustworthiness of other speakers, and what it might mean for democracy
By RonNell Andersen Jones & Sonja R. West -
Essays and Scholarship
Weaponized from the Beginning
A century-old specter of propaganda and lies distorting the public sphere is raised as intermediary institutions that manage unregulated speech are undermined
By John Fabian Witt -
Essays and Scholarship
Distrust, Negative First Amendment Theory, and the Regulation of Lies
Why the reflexive deployment of negative theory, which increasingly dominates the contemporary Supreme Court’s approach to Free Speech Clause problems, has its costs
By Helen Norton -
Essays and Scholarship
Epistemic Disagreement, Institutional Analysis, and the First Amendment Status of Lies
When calls for regulating lies collide with free expression values
By Mark Tushnet -
Essays and Scholarship
When Are Lies Constitutionally Protected?
A framework for drawing lines on lies
By Eugene Volokh -
Essays and Scholarship
Democracy Harms and the First Amendment
How to regulate lies that cause constitutionally “cognizable” harms to the structural interests of constitutional democracy
By Deborah Pearlstein -
Essays and Scholarship
Privacy, Autonomy, and the Dissolution of Markets
Pathways from platform capitalism
By Kiel Brennan-Marquez & Daniel Susser -
Essays and Scholarship
The CLOUD Act and the Accused
Privacy asymmetries limit access to evidence of innocence and are worsening in the global data economy. But the proper reading of a key statute could help reverse the inequity.
By Rebecca Wexler -
Essays and Scholarship
How the Biden Administration and Congress Can Fix Prepublication Review: A Roadmap for Reform
Prepublication review is a sweeping and broken system in need of repair
By Jameel Jaffer , Alex Abdo , Meenakshi Krishnan & Ramya Krishnan -
Essays and Scholarship
The Great Reckoning
Lessons from 1940s media policy battles
By Victor Pickard -
Essays and Scholarship
The Democratic Regulation of Artificial Intelligence
A case for focusing on forward-looking policy considerations rather than a rights framework in regulating “AI systems”
By Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar & Aziz Z. Huq -
Essays and Scholarship
A Safe Harbor for Platform Research
Knight Institute policy paper proposes legal protection for certain research and newsgathering projects focused on platforms
By Alex Abdo , Ramya Krishnan , Stephanie Krent , Evan Welber Falcón & Andrew Keane Woods -
Essays and Scholarship
A Standard for Universal Digital Ad Transparency
Proposal spells out criteria that trigger transparency requirement, with ad data to be collected by government agency
By Laura Edelson , Jason Chuang , Erika Franklin Fowler , Michael M. Franz & Travis Ridout -
Essays and Scholarship
Data and Democracy: An Introduction
Questions of data regulation are at the heart of democratic practice today, from issues of secrecy to the use of data to constitute democratic institutions themselves
By Amy Kapczynski -
Essays and Scholarship
Licensure as Data Governance
Moving toward an industrial policy for artificial intelligence
By Frank Pasquale -
Essays and Scholarship
What We Owe Whistleblowers
Jameel Jaffer argues that their disclosures since 9/11 have been vital, and that we should protect them better than we do
By Jameel Jaffer -
Essays and Scholarship
The Keys to the Kingdom
Mathias Vermeulen on overcoming GDPR concerns to unlock access to platform data for independent researchers
By Mathias Vermeulen -
Essays and Scholarship
Transparency’s AI Problem
Artificial intelligence’s opaque processes and outcomes make it an incomplete tool for governing
By Hannah Bloch-Wehba -
Essays and Scholarship
Amplification and Its Discontents
Why regulating the reach of online content is hard
By Daphne Keller -
Essays and Scholarship
Is the Administrative State Ready for Big Data?
Exploring the accountability challenges in environmental and public health regulation
By Wendy Wagner & Martin Murillo -
Essays and Scholarship
Platform Accountability Through Digital “Poison Cabinets”
Preserving records of what user content is taken down—and why—could make platforms more accountable and transparent
By John Bowers , Elaine Sedenberg & Jonathan Zittrain -
Essays and Scholarship
How (Not) to Write a Privacy Law
Disrupting surveillance-based business models requires government innovation
By Julie E. Cohen -
Essays and Scholarship
Democracy's Data Infrastructure
The technopolitics of the U.S. census
By Dan Bouk & danah boyd -
Essays and Scholarship
Antitrust and Corruption: Overruling Noerr
The case for abolishing the strained Noerr doctrine
By Tim Wu -
Essays and Scholarship
Measuring and Protecting Media Plurality in the Digital Age: A Political Economy Approach
Developing a platform-neutral "attention share" plurality review for media mergers
By Andrea Prat -
Essays and Scholarship
Collaboration and Competition in Information and News During Antitrust’s Formative Era
Tracing the history of the interplay between competition, the free flow of information, and democratic values in Supreme Court opinions
By Daniel Crane -
Essays and Scholarship
Social Media Regulation in the Public Interest: Some Lessons from History
Examining past abuses of the ‘public interest’ standard to argue against expanding antitrust authority
By John Samples & Paul Matzko -
Essays and Scholarship
The Limits of Antimonopoly Law as a Solution to the Problems of the Platform Public Sphere
Arguing which antimonopoly tools do and don't matter
By Genevieve Lakier -
Essays and Scholarship
How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media
Creating incentives for social media companies to be responsible and trustworthy institutions
By Jack M. Balkin -
Essays and Scholarship
[The] Breakup Speech: Can Antitrust Fix the Relationship Between Platforms and Free Speech Values?
Avoiding antitrust when competition isn't the problem
By Neil Chilson & Casey Mattox -
Essays and Scholarship
Digital Information Fidelity and Friction
Crafting a systems-level approach to transparency
By Ellen P. Goodman -
Essays and Scholarship
The Rise of Content Cartels
Urging transparency and accountability in industry-wide content removal decisions
By Evelyn Douek -
Essays and Scholarship
From Private Bads to Public Goods: Adapting Public Utility Regulation for Informational Infrastructure
Dismantling surveillance-based business models
By K. Sabeel Rahman & Zephyr Teachout -
Essays and Scholarship
The National Security Case for Breaking Up Big Tech
Reframing the tech giants' role in an era of great power competition
By Ganesh Sitaraman -
Essays and Scholarship
The Case for Digital Public Infrastructure
Harnessing past successes in public broadcasting to build community-oriented digital tools
By Ethan Zuckerman -
Essays and Scholarship
Beyond First Amendment Lochnerism: A Political Process Approach
Exploring the First Amendment's evolving role in America's democratic political process and private commercial sphere
By Tim Wu -
Essays and Scholarship
Cavalier Bot Regulation and the First Amendment's Threat Model
Balancing artificial bot babble, real human exchange, and First Amendment obligations when regulating online spaces
By Jamie Lee Williams -
Essays and Scholarship
The Free Speech Black Hole: Can the Internet Escape the Gravitational Pull of the First Amendment?
Diving into the tension between free speech, regulation, and inequality
By Mary Anne Franks -
Essays and Scholarship
Introducing Free Speech Futures
The Knight Institute's second essay series asks leading scholars to think beyond existing First Amendment doctrine to imagine what freedom of speech could be in our current moment and our future.
By Jamal Greene -
Essays and Scholarship
Probably Speech, Maybe Free: Toward a Probabilistic Understanding of Online Expression and Platform Governance
Considering the cost of applying a probablistic statistical framework to First Amendment questions on digital platforms
By Mike Ananny -
Essays and Scholarship
Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech
Altering the internet's economic and digital infrastructure to promote free speech
By Mike Masnick -
Essays and Scholarship
A Raucous First Amendment
Imagining a future of untamed, wild, boisterous, and raucous free speech
By Jeremy Waldron -
Essays and Scholarship
Keeping the New Governors Accountable: Expanding the First Amendment Right of Access to Silicon Valley
Recommending "technological transparency" for effective self-government in the U.S.
By Victoria Baranetsky -
Essays and Scholarship
First Things First: Online Advertising Practices and Their Effects on Platform Speech
Crafting policy to combat social media's harmful business practices that encourage destructive speech
By Jeff Gary & Ashkan Soltani -
Essays and Scholarship
Meet the New Governors, Same as the Old Governors
Response to Kate Klonick's "Facebook v. Sullivan"
By Enrique Armijo -
Essays and Scholarship
Newsworthiness and the Search for Norms
Response to Kate Klonick's "Facebook v. Sullivan"
By Amy Gajda -
Essays and Scholarship
Profits v. Principles
Response to Kate Klonick's "Facebook v. Sullivan"
By Sarah C. Haan -
Essays and Scholarship
Authoritarian Constitutionalism in Facebookland
Introduction to Kate Klonick's "Facebook v. Sullivan"
By David Pozen -
Essays and Scholarship
Facebook v. Sullivan
Investigating Facebook’s use of the “public figure” and “newsworthiness” concepts in content moderation decisions.
By Kate Klonick -
Essays and Scholarship
Introducing the Emerging Threats Essays
The Knight Institute's inaugural essay series invites leading thinkers to identify and grapple with newly arising or intensifying structural threats to the system of free expression.
By Jameel Jaffer & David Pozen -
Essays and Scholarship
Crisis in the Archives
Introduction to Matthew Connelly's "State Secrecy, Archival Negligence, and the End of History as We Know It"
By David Pozen -
Essays and Scholarship
State Secrecy, Archival Negligence, and the End of History as We Know It
The collapse of the U.S. government's system for organizing, conserving, and revealing its activities.
By Matthew Connelly -
Essays and Scholarship
A Response from the National Archives
Response to Matthew Connelly's "State Secrecy, Archival Negligence, and the End of History as We Know It"
By David S. Ferriero -
Essays and Scholarship
Rescuing History (and Accountability) from Secrecy
Response to Matthew Connelly's "State Secrecy, Archival Negligence, and the End of History as We Know It"
By Elizabeth Goitein -
Essays and Scholarship
Archiving as Politics in the National Security State
Response to Matthew Connelly's "State Secrecy, Archival Negligence, and the End of History as We Know It"
By Kirsten Weld -
Essays and Scholarship
The Failure of Internet Freedom
Probing the demise of a non-regulation, anti-censorship, global internet agenda.
By Jack Goldsmith -
Essays and Scholarship
The Limits of Supply-Side Internet Freedom
Response to Jack Goldsmith's essay "The Failure of Internet Freedom"
By David Kaye -
Essays and Scholarship
Internet Freedom Without Imperialism
Respone to Jack Goldsmith's "The Failure of Internet Freedom"
By Nani Jansen Reventlow & Jonathan McCully -
Essays and Scholarship
The De-Americanization of Internet Freedom
Introduction to Jack Goldsmith's "The Failure of Internet Freedom"
By David Pozen -
Essays and Scholarship
Section 230’s Challenge to Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Response to Olivier Sylvain's essay "Discriminatory Designs on User Data"
By Danielle Keats Citron -
Essays and Scholarship
To Err Is Platform
Response to Olivier Sylvain's essay "Discriminatory Designs on User Data"
By James Grimmelman -
Essays and Scholarship
Toward a Clearer Conversation About Platform Liability
Response to Olivier Sylvain's essay "Discriminatory Designs on User Data"
By Daphne Keller -
Essays and Scholarship
Intermediary Immunity and Discriminatory Designs
Introduction to Olivier Sylvain's "Discriminatory Designs on User Data"
By David Pozen -
Essays and Scholarship
Discriminatory Designs on User Data
Exploring how Section 230's immunity protections may enable or elicit disciminatory behaviors online
By Olivier Sylvain -
Essays and Scholarship
Search Engines, Social Media, and the Editorial Analogy
Deconstructing the “editorial analogy,” and analogical reasoning more generally, in First Amendment litigation involving powerful tech companies.
By Heather Whitney -
Essays and Scholarship
Straining (Analogies) to Make Sense of the First Amendment in Cyberspace
Introduction to Heather Whitney's "Search Engines, Social Media, and the Editorial Analogy"
By David Pozen -
Essays and Scholarship
The Problem Isn't the Use of Analogies but the Analogies Courts Use
Response to Heather Whitney's essay "Search Engines, Social Media, and the Editorial Analogy"
By Genevieve Lakier -
Essays and Scholarship
Preventing a Posthuman Law of Freedom of Expression
Response to Heather Whitney's "Search Engines, Social Media, and the Editorial Analogy"
By Frank Pasquale -
Essays and Scholarship
Of Course the First Amendment Protects Google and Facebook (and It's Not a Close Question)
Response to Heather Whitney's "Search Engines, Social Media, and the Editorial Analogy"
By Eric Goldman -
Essays and Scholarship
Policing, Protesting, and the Insignificance of Hostile Audiences
Response to Frederick Schauer's "The Hostile Audience Revisited"
By Rachel A. Harmon -
Essays and Scholarship
The Hostile Audience Revisited
Incendiary speech in the wake of Charlottesville, Berkeley, Boston, and beyond.
By Frederick Schauer -
Essays and Scholarship
Unsafe Spaces
Response to Frederick Schauer's essay "The Hostile Audience Revisited"
By Jelani Cobb -
Essays and Scholarship
Heading Off the Hostile Audience
Response to Frederick Schauer's "The Hostile Audience Revisited"
By Mark Edmundson -
Essays and Scholarship
Costing Out Campus Speaker Restrictions
Response to Frederick Schauer's "The Hostile Audience Revisited"
By Suzanne Goldberg -
Essays and Scholarship
From the Heckler’s Veto to the Provocateur’s Privilege
Introduction to Frederick Schauer's "The Hostile Audience Revisited"
By David Pozen -
Essays and Scholarship
Not Waving but Drowning: Saving the Audience from the Floods
Response to Tim Wu's "Is the First Amendment Obsolete?"
By Rebecca Tushnet -
Essays and Scholarship
Reflections on Whether the First Amendment Is Obsolete
Response to Tim Wu's "Is the First Amendment Obsolete?"
By Geoffrey R. Stone -
Essays and Scholarship
Is the First Amendment Obsolete?
New free expression challenges from “troll armies,” “flooding,” and propaganda robots that aim to distort or drown out disfavored speech.
By Tim Wu