Authors: Joan Donovan, Christopher Kelty, Pamela Lim, Won Kyung Oh, Ravneet Purewal, Antoine Rajkovic, and Michael Scheipe — In September of 2015, the Participation Lab at UCLA began researching how white supremacists use genetic ancestry testing to make sense of identity, biology, and human history. We wanted to know what the most extreme, rascist, nazi-sympathizing […]
The despair that followed Trump’s victory for many only began to shift for me when I remembered some words from 1972, written in a similar state of despair at the time of Richard Nixon’s victory over George McGovern in that year’s Presidential race. Not that these words were hopeful, but their outrage reminded me of […]
As a Brit, I approached the 2016 Us election with June’s Brexit vote firmly in mind. I had never felt such raw anger and bewilderment at a political event as on June 24, 2016, and through the following days. With millions of others, I am still living within the dark shadow of that ambiguous and […]
As an American who lives in the United Kingdom, I have witnessed the disturbing rise and empowerment of two nationalist populist movements, Brexit and Trump. The wounds of the first were still smarting when the debilitating blow of the second were felt. Can’t go home and don’t want to stay here, is how a lot […]
This is the big year for computational propaganda—using immense data sets to manipulate public opinion over social media. Both the Brexit referendum and US election have revealed the limits of modern democracy, and social media platforms are currently setting those limits. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook now provide a structure for our political lives. We’ve […]