Shows
Positive World, Positive PeopleDeen Freelon and the Influence of MisinformationToday, we will discuss misinformation in the media and its impacts. We are surrounded by the media, and for most of us, it is incredibly difficult to differentiate what is real and what is not. Not every source is reliable, and that can make interacting with all media variants highly challenging. Here to discuss and inform us on this vast topic is Dr. Deen Freelon.Support the show
2025-12-0129 min
Beyond Black History MonthHenry Louis Gates, Black Twitter, and Elon Musk: What happens now to the digital grapevine?Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Black social media users have seen an increase of racist and hateful trolling. This has caused some notable Black users to leave the platform. But what happens if there is a mass exodus? In this episode, we dig into why Black Twitter is so important to the culture and connections of Black folks. We speak with scholar Henry Louis Gates to learn how the digital spaces today are rooted in the ways enslaved folks communicated. We also speak with professor and researcher Deen Freelon to learn what happens to Black creativity when those networks...
2022-11-1018 min
The Public DiplomatTwitter Vs Democracywitter vs Democracy: A conversation with Deen Freelon The mass penetration of social media brought promise of improved democracies, but could it be that it delivered the opposite? In the latest episode we discuss this issue with Professor Deen Freelon of the University of North Carolina. If it is Twitter vs Democracy or YouTube as the platform giving rise to social movements, we discuss selective exposure, partisan media, misinformation and disinformation, along with an array of topics related to modern politics in the age of social media networks.
For more about Deen: http://hussman.unc.edu/directory/fa...
2022-08-1642 min
Diaries of Social Data Research15. Race in Computational Disinformation Analysis and Deep Reading with Deen FreelonOur guest in this episode is Deen Freelon, Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina in the School of Journalism and Media. We chat about his 2020 Social Science Computer Review Paper "Black Trolls Matter: Racial and Ideological Asymmetries in Social Media Disinformation" with co-authors Michael Bossetta, Chris Wells, Josephine Lukito, Yiping Xia, and Kirsten Adams.
Deen also talks about writing a "behind the scenes" book chapter about the process of making this paper, being one of the first movers in the discipline of computational methods for communication studies, and how he learns programming best when it...
2022-03-0651 min
Scaling LawsDeen Freelon on Why Black Trolls MatterThis week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Deen Freelon, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Deen’s work focuses on data science and political expression on social media, and they discussed research he conducted on tweets from the Internet Research Agency troll farm and their attempts to influence U.S. politics, including around the 2016 election. In a recent article, Deen and his coauthors found that IRA tweets from accounts presenting themselves as Black Americans received particularly high engagement from other users on T...
2022-02-0351 min
One World, One Network‽Deen Freelon - One Network, Many Neighborhoods‽This episode features Deen Freelon – one of the Conference Theme Co-Chairs of the 2022 ICA Conference. With a panel of guest speakers, Deen critically explores the implications of One World One Network‽ This episode’s guests also discuss their personal experiences as Black grad students and scholars in the field of communication. They touch on challenges they face, like white researchers not taking their work seriously, and their hopes for the field’s future.Click here for the episode transcript on our webpage.FeaturingDeen FreelonCharlton McIlwainMeredi...
2021-12-2321 min
Reimagining the Internet35 Social Media for Activism with Deen FreelonDeen Freelon is one of the foremost scholars on how contemporary protest movements organize on the Internet. This week Deen joins us to talk about his work on the Black Lives Matter movement, how he's trying to understand mis- and disinformation from both the right and the left, and what fixing social media might look like when the scale of platforms like Facebook and Twitter is what makes them so exciting and so difficult to moderate.
2021-10-2131 min
One World, One Network‽Ep 0 - One World, One Network‽If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about our guests and the interrobang, here are some materials to check out:Ingrid Bachmann@ingrid_bachmann@fcomucShakuntala BanajiTEDx Talk on Young People, the Internet and Civic ParticipationNoshir ContractorNosh.northwestern.eduSonic.northwestern.edu@noshirBrooke Foucault Welleshttps://www.networkscienceinstitute.org/commlab@foucaultwelesDeen Freelonhttp://Citap.unc.edugithub.com/dfreelon@dfreelonJack Qiu@jacklqiu@CNMnusHerman Wassermanhttp://www.cfms.uct.ac.za/fam/staff/wassermanhttp://www.disinfoafrica.org...
2021-09-2820 min
Does Not ComputeConspiracy and RacismWhat do conspiracy theories and racism have in common? More than you might think. Deen Freelon explores how white supremacy itself can be understood as a disinformation campaign and how a willingness to believe all sorts of terrible and false things about people of other races might open a door to believing falsehoods about science, medicine, politics and other topics. Even when Black communities and right-wing political groups express similar distrust of official government sources and embrace conspiracies, they do so via very different paths. We talk about conspiracies, racism, and recognizing when the government actually is...
2021-06-2927 min
Untangling the WebIdentity and the Web with Deen FreelonOur guest for this episode is Deen Freelon, an associate professor in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His research ranges from political expression through digital media to data science to computational methods. He has also served as principal investigator on grants from the Knight Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the US Institute of Peace. Not only does Deen make intellectual contributions to the fields of web science, communication studies, and more, but he also focuses on engaging and helping the general public with his insights.
In this c...
2021-02-1929 min
Science FridayScience And The Election, Disinformation, Vampire Bats. Oct 30, 2020, Part 1Choosing the next U.S. president is not the only decision voters will make in the upcoming 2020 elections. Major science policies are also on the ballot. In some states, people will be casting votes on propositions that influence scientific research and the environment. While in other local elections, candidates with scientific backgrounds are in the running for public office. Jeffrey Mervis of Science Magazine talks about California stem cell research policies and Nevada renewable energy propositions, and how a science platform could help or harm candidates.
Plus, this election season has been filled with disinformation—unverified stories of vo...
2020-10-3047 min
Before You VoteHow to tackle misinformation and disinformationIn the fourth episode, City & State Editor Sonia Rao talks to UNC professor Deen Freelon and Politifact's Josie Hollingsworth about misinformation and disinformation, and how becoming more media literate can help prepare voters for the election.
2020-10-0600 min
Before You VoteHow to tackle misinformation and disinformationIn the fourth episode, City & State Editor Sonia Rao talks to UNC professor Deen Freelon and Politifact's Josie Hollingsworth about misinformation and disinformation, and how becoming more media literate can help prepare voters for the election.
2020-10-0600 min
Tech Policy LeadersCharlton McIlwain, WashingTECH’s Incoming Board Chair, Fireside Bio Charlton McIlwain (@cmcilwain) is Vice Provost or Faculty Engagement and Development; Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. His recent work focuses on the intersections of race, digital media, and racial justice activism. He recently wrote Racial Formation, Inequality & the Political Economy of Web Traffic, in the journal Information, Communication & Society, and he co-authored, with Deen Freelon and Meredith Clark, the recent report Beyond the Hashtags: Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice, published by the Center for Media & Social Impact, and supported by the Spencer Foundation. Today, Tuesday Oc...
2020-09-2119 min
Life SolvedHOW POLITICS BECAME SOCIAL FT. DR. JAMES DENNISFrom the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to protest in response to the death of George Floyd, Dr James Dennis explores how social media is a gateway and amplifier to learning, engagement and civil participation in politics. Find out how political behaviour is changing in the digital age and how social media can be used as a force for change and mass participation in the issues of the day. Subscribe for a new episode every week, and share the big idea #lifesolved You can find out more about research taki...
2020-08-0429 min
Data @ RestData at Rest 02x03: DisinformationData at Rest 02x03: Disinformation Charlie and Michael are joined by Professor Deen Freelon of UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media and UNC’s Center for Internet, Technology, and Public Life, to discuss disinformation campaigns on the Internet and how to spot the warning signs that information might not be authentic. Plus: Potemkin villages! Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency's impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-201...
2020-03-1153 min
Tech Policy LeadersCharlton McIlwain: The Internet and Racial JusticeBio Charlton McIlwain (@cmcilwain) is Vice Provost or Faculty Engagement and Development; Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. His recent work focuses on the intersections of race, digital media, and racial justice activism. He recently wrote Racial Formation, Inequality & the Political Economy of Web Traffic, in the journal Information, Communication & Society, and he co-authored, with Deen Freelon and Meredith Clark, the recent report Beyond the Hashtags: Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice, published by the Center for Media & Social Impact, and supported by the Spencer Foundation. Today, Tuesday Oc...
2019-10-0119 min
Social Media and PoliticsComputational Social Science and Digital Methods in the Post-API Age, with Dr. Deen FreelonDr. Deen Freelon, Associate Professor in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses how researchers collect and analyze social media data to study politics. We talk about Facebook's recent API shut-down, the new Social Science One initiative, differences between Python and R programming languages, and one of his recent reports analyzing how minority communities engage with news on Twitter.
2018-08-1242 min
MIT Comparative Media Studies/WritingThe (Non)Americans: Tracking and Analyzing Russian Influence Operations on TwitterIn late 2017, Twitter and Facebook revealed that agents backed by the Russian government had infiltrated American political conversations for years. Posing as concerned citizens from across the ideological spectrum, these agents surreptitiously spread propaganda disguised as home-grown political chatter. Two challenges, one theoretical and the other methodological, confront researchers interested in studying this campaign of information warfare. First, the fields of communication and political science offer little theoretical guidance about how to study such tactics, which are known as influence operations in military studies and dezinformatsiya in Russian and Slavic studies. Second, Twitter and Facebook removed all such propagandistic content...
2018-03-021h 19
Tech Policy LeadersCharlton McIlwain: How to talk to policy makers about racism and the internet.Charlton McIlwain (@cmcilwain) - As a researcher, writer and teacher, Dr. McIlwain's primary interests focus broadly on issues of race and media, particularly within the social and political arena. His previous work centered on how political candidates construct, mobilize, benefit or suffer damage from race-based appeals. In 2011 Dr. McIlwain co-authored the book Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns (Temple University Press). In 2012, the book won the prestigious Ralph Bunche Award, given by the American Political Science Association for the best book addressing ethnic pluralism. The same year, the American Library Association recognized the book...
2016-02-0246 min