In recent years it has become increasingly apparent that misinformation and enmity between groups is being fuelled by social media. A number of social media platforms foster dialogue, share image and video combined with text, and allow people and groups to moderate and rate and evaluate content. Is it possible to raise the visibility of certain sources via a ranking score that acknowledges or rewards trustworthiness? What are the mechanisms involved in sharing content that users find rewarding and enriching? And how could this enhanced content be measured, also in terms of its effects, especially at larger scales?
Thus far, there has been much research on eliminating dis- or misinformation, fact-checking content, and examining the spread of malicious content. This project will look more on the positive side: which types of platform architectures and mechanisms can encourage mutually engaging content that stimulates a diversity of perspectives and at the same time an inclusive and accurate representation of views? The project will take history as a first topic area that can be explored since it is contentious. Yet history is also a topic where a shared or common understanding can provide a model for other topic areas, such as climate change and sustainable futures.
The project will undertake a series of case studies, seeking to understand the underlying mechanisms to elicit best practices and provide a roadmap for the future, which includes how volunteer and civil society forces can be combined to shape a more beneficial role for digital media in society, and how computational social sciences can be used to understand these forces.
Senior Research Fellow
Project role: Principal Investigator
Ralph Schroeder has interests in shared virtual environments and the sociology of science and technology. His current research is related to digital media and populism, climate change online, AI and social theory, and the internet in China and India.
Professor of Indian History, Faculty of History, University of Oxford
Project role: Co-Investigator
Dr Devji is an historian interested in the intellectual history and political thought of modern South Asia as well as in the emergence of Islam as a global category.
By Professor Ralph Schroeder
This report provides an overview of how the internet may play a role in promoting the social good, focusing on the areas of the public understandings of history and of climate change.
