Skip down to main content

Civic Engagement, Bots, and the Internet of Things (IoT)

With Professor Philip Howard
Recorded:
15 Jun 2015
Speakers:
With Professor Philip Howard

Phil Howard discusses civic engagement, bots, and the Internet of things (IoT). Phil will present his latest research and ask for advice on what to do next. His new book is Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up, and it is about the impact of IoT on civic engagement. The next project is a large 5-year research effort on “computational propaganda” supported by the European Research Council. Social media can have an impressive impact on civic engagement and political discourse. Yet increasingly we find political actors using digital media and automated scripts for social control. Computational propaganda — through bots, botnets, and algorithms — has become one of the most concerning political impacts of technology innovation. If overtly political bots are a threat to public life, what should be on our research agenda for the next five years?

Slides: http://paxtechnica.org/?page_id=104

Recorded by Data & Society Research Institute. Databites are Data & Society’s weekly lunch conversations focused on unresolved questions and timely topics of interest to our community. Intro and outro music tracks by Podington Bear: The Sound of Picture Production Library (soundofpicture.com).

Related Topics:

Privacy Overview
Oxford Internet Institute

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies
  • moove_gdrp_popup -  a cookie that saves your preferences for cookie settings. Without this cookie, the screen offering you cookie options will appear on every page you visit.

This cookie remains on your computer for 365 days, but you can adjust your preferences at any time by clicking on the "Cookie settings" link in the website footer.

Please note that if you visit the Oxford University website, any cookies you accept there will appear on our site here too, this being a subdomain. To control them, you must change your cookie preferences on the main University website.

Google Analytics

This website uses Google Tags and Google Analytics to collect anonymised information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. Keeping these cookies enabled helps the OII improve our website.

Enabling this option will allow cookies from:

  • Google Analytics - tracking visits to the ox.ac.uk and oii.ox.ac.uk domains

These cookies will remain on your website for 365 days, but you can edit your cookie preferences at any time via the "Cookie Settings" button in the website footer.