University of Kwazulu-Natal

Aimes Lab Internet Democracy Initiative

Bonisiwe Shabane
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aimes lab internet democracy initiative

The AI-Media Strategies Lab – AIMES Lab – focuses on the use of AI technologies in media industries, providing evidence-based recommendations to organizations, and producing research leveraging methods such as surveys, focus groups, experiments,... The Lab’s Director is Dr. John Wihbey, associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern University and a consultant and analyst. His graduate-level course “AI in Media Industries” will run in Spring 2025. AIMES seeks to partner with and advise organizations on using AI tools to accomplish their media-related goals, in areas such as news, communications, social media, public relations, advocacy, and more. The Lab seeks to learn from external organizations and consolidate knowledge about the state of the art (applied research), as well as produce more basic research about AI technologies and their uses and perceptions...

AIMES looks to be an educational bridge as the media and communications workforce adapts to a new technological paradigm. The research goals of the AIMES Lab are: The AI-Media Strategies Lab – AIMES Lab – focuses on the use of AI technologies in media industries, providing evidence-based recommendations to organizations, and producing research leveraging methods such as surveys, focus groups, experiments,... AIMES Lab seeks to partner with and advise organizations on using AI tools to accomplish their media-related goals, in areas such as news, communications, social media, public relations, advocacy, and more. The Lab seeks to learn from external organizations and consolidate knowledge about the state of the art (applied research), as well as produce more basic research about AI technologies and their uses and perceptions... (See more at the full AIMES Lab website.)

The Lab’s Director is Dr. John Wihbey, associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern University and a consultant and analyst. His graduate-level course “AI in Media Industries” will run in Spring 2025. (See the NGN news write-up of the course.) AIMS looks to be an educational bridge as the media and communications workforce adapts to a new technological paradigm. The Internet Democracy Initiative studies problems that have widespread information and social media implications.

This initiative provides leadership in understanding the role of the internet in structuring democracy, society, and markets. How can the internet be a constructive force in society? The early days of the internet offered the promise of decentralized democratic transformation, social connection, easy access to high quality information, and a platform to diverse voices. While there are glimpses of these possibilities still, the internet today is strikingly centralized and dominated by relatively few gatekeepers, with society riven by polarization. The bottom-up utopian vision of the 1990s has seemingly turned into a 2020s dystopia of misinformation and harassment, producing calls for aggressive top-down control by corporations and government. The objective of this initiative is to support rigorous research on the problems of the contemporary information ecosystem, and to evaluate the potential of interventions into and uses of the affordances of the internet...

The 50-state report, published as part of the multiuniversity Civic Health and Institutions Project (CHIP50), found that views about how and whether to rein in AI tools don’t follow typical red-blue state divides. Missouri and Washington, for example, expressed the strongest views about a lack of regulatory oversight, while New York and Tennessee were most worried about government overreach. Featuring David Lazer, John Wihbey and Hong Qu “America must regulate social media”: AIMES Lab director, John Wihbey writes for Time Promoting an informed society around the uses and consequences of artificial intelligence. We study the intersection of media and AI.

The AI Literacy Lab, part of the Internet Democracy Initiative at Northeastern University, is a center for thinking, collaboration, and insight on communication in the age of AI. Our leaders are media, computational social science, and computer science faculty, working alongside media practitioners. Our research relates to public understanding of new media and AI-driven technologies, and the factors that contribute to public knowledge. We want to bring scholars, journalists, and technologists together to understand the implications of new technology, communicate the work of technology development, and promote the responsible use of AI. Our mission is to foster a well-informed global society that is equipped to grapple with the promise and pitfalls of emerging technology — and to use AI in the service of democracy. Follow us on: GitHub YouTube Vimeo Twitter LinkedIn

Last year AIM4DEM started the trajectory as a Dutch Research Council-funded Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects (ELSA) Lab. The overarching goal: to develop and test value-driven, human-centered AI applications and ethical and legal frameworks for responsible use of AI in the media. We do so in close collaboration with our project partners, which include journalists, media professionals, designers, citizens, researchers, and public and societal partners. Over the past year, the lab has been actively involved in a range of research initiatives, outreach events, and conferences, underlining our commitment to exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence, media, and democracy. From delving into provocotyping AI tools to actively participating in conferences (about AI and Democracy, the Future of Journalism, and more), the researchers have been at the forefront of discussions surrounding the impact of... They’ve contributed to the regulatory discussion on generative AI by co-organizing a workshop with AlgorithmWatch and providing recommendations for the AI Act.

Earlier this year, the lab committed to demystifying generative AI by organizing a discussion series called ‘The Impact We Generate’, covering legal aspects, disinformation, and news media. Together with the Institute for Advance Study, AIM4DEM’s host on Tuesdays, they organized a series of meetings called ‘Meet New Methods’, fostering discussions on methodologies that contextualise the impact of new algorithmic technologies. As part of the ambition to proactively gather input from project partners, the lab aims to hold annual community meetings to present ongoing research, hear from our partners about pressing matters in their organisations,... On Tuesday, November 7th, the lab held the first of these annual meetings at the Institute for Advanced Study. A full report of the meeting can be found here, including a presentation by CWI’s Simone Ooms (DIS group), reporting her human-centered work aiming to bridge the spheres of academia and industry by making...

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