This week in unreal birds: My new article with @joncong.bsky.social offers a retrospective on the pathologies of disinfo programming in the Global South. I tackle civic engagement and social media for the @kettering.org. And implications for Orban's defeat: deans-list.ghost.io/unreal-bird-...

Article ALERT: doi.org/10.1080/1058... Towards the Comparative Study of Domestic Influence Operations: Cyber Troops and Elite Competition in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand – Political Communication How do domestic online influence operations vary across countries, and why?🧵

Congratulations to @joncong.bsky.social, professor of communication & founding director of the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab (GloTech), @umassamherst.bsky.social, for being appointed co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Cultural Studies: www.umass.edu/news/article...

🎆🎆JUNE PUBLICATION ALERT🎆🎆 Our 18 #openaccess papers published in June are HOT to go, complete with the Special Section on "True Costs of Misinformation," guest edited by @joncong.bsky.social and @bostonjoan.bsky.social . Read at ijoc.org

Our Internationalisation Lead, @joncong.bsky.social, has co-guest edited a Special Section on True Costs of Misinformation for the International Journal of Communication. Read the edition here: ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc

Work-in-progress and powering thru this Boston heat wave 😅

In a short span of time there has been a global rise in "fake news" laws - legislation that purports to or is designed to curb the spread of false information. @sbradshaw.bsky.social, Monzima Haque, and I wanted to understand why. "The Global Spread of Misinformation Laws" ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

Now available! A special section of @ijoc-usc.bsky.social, True Costs of Misinformation, co-guest edited by @joncong.bsky.social, addresses key questions in disinfo studies. Check out the Intro: ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

Folks at #ica25 might wanna check out @ijoc-usc.bsky.social’s Special Section on True Costs of Misinformation, guest edited by me and @bostonjoan.bsky.social. The collection critiques mainstream frameworks of disinfo studies, written during a more hopeful "peak moment": ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc

🌐Counter-disinformation funding in the Global Majority is broken, @joncong.bsky.social & @dwj88.bsky.social argue. What can be done to fix it? Read their full piece in the new #DigitalDemocracyNetwork compendium on @carnegieendowment.org⤵️

New in academia: We have a special issue organized by @joncong.bsky.social and me about THE TRUE COSTS OF MISINFORMATION Incredible papers on a range of topics focused on the financial, political, social, and cultural toll of misinformation-at-scale. Phenomenal work! ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

Some colleagues are processing Duterte's arrest with anxiety and ambivalence. I don’t think that we should shame folks working thru these emotions. 1/5

Cited in this @gqmagazine.bsky.social piece on Chaotic Twinks as the Archetype of the Moment. Proud to show interdisciplinarity and impact to opine on unshaming our kinks to burn it all down in public and private lives. My Dean will be thrilled. 😘 www.gq.com/story/how-th...

Excited to be speaking in this timely event at MIT on Platforms & Justice with the brill @zoeglatt.bsky.social, @norasuren.bsky.social & @joncong.bsky.social; I'll bring the experiences of Palestinian and Jewish creators being culturally misread, flagged & muted—by both algorithms & humans; Join!👇🔥

📢📢📢 My brilliant friend @danijaradent.bsky.social and I have released a report (from our TCRN event) shedding light on the structural inequalities that shape the experiences of Latin American creators on TikTok. Their reality is one of constant struggle; see 🧵 tiktokcultures.com/latam-report/

Thank you Tom ☺️ We felt our research really spoke to the global tech justice piece you wrote with @joncong.bsky.social on the impact of Meta's decisions for marginalised communities + regions grappling with deep-seated conflicts. CN is not designed to address harm + its ethos will likely sow harm.

It's going to take a lot courage but courage is contagious. Refusing to live in fear is freedom in a fascist state. That doesn't mean you can't feel afraid, but it means overcoming it. It means putting your job, your livelihood, your comfort on the line. Solidarity for others is paramount.

It is precisely the Global Majority’s aversion to techno-legal fixes that gives rise to the creativity of its civil society. The world should take note. https://buff.ly/3E0Dunu @joncong.bsky.social & #GloTechLab advance a Global Majority-driven agenda on disinformation.

Trump nationalizing TikTok should light up a big, flashy neon sign ✨Platform Opportunism✨ It shows how quickly demonized platforms turn into tools of power when conditions align. As @jessmaddox.bsky.social points, we must confront these shifts with nuance and resist the lure of saviorism👇

🤩 The CfP for the 7th Deliberative Democracy Summer School is out now 🤩 A toast to our colleagues from the University of Zurich for hosting the European version of the summer school. Grants available for students with limited institutional support. www.ipz.uzh.ch/en/study/doc...

What does a Global Majority agenda look like for tech and democracy? It's one that is civil society-driven and not dependent on techno-legal solutions from Washington DC or Brussels. @dwj88.bsky.social and I discuss GloTech Lab's South-to-South study for @ssrc.org👇 mediawell.ssrc.org/articles/the...

Civil society in the Global Majority is leading bold new approaches to counter-disinformation, prioritizing resilience, accountability, and creativity. Learn more in this article by @joncong.bsky.social and @dwj88.bsky.social : mediawell.ssrc.org/articles/the...

Discussing fact-checking. But at a deeper level offering solar plexus chakra healing 🌞 #OracleOng 🔮

The Philippines’ Vera Files reports below their fact-checking partnership with Meta is still on for 2025. This is important as it’s a big election year! Their editor quotes me and @tomdivon.bsky.social’s critique of big tech philanthrocapitalism 👇🏽 verafiles.org/articles/no-...

Great choice of thumbnail to accompany our op-ed about Zuckerberg’s techbro power play flexing exceptional American values against calls for global tech justice. Co authored with my own academic “bro” @tomdivon.bsky.social 🔥💪🏽

🔥 piece on Meta's global responsibility: "Rather than investing in culturally informed moderation with local language and regional expertise, Meta opts for a hands-off strategy, leaving fragile ecosystems to navigate a worsening crisis of truth." @jonathanong.bsky.social @tomdivon.bsky.social

This is a great piece! I'm less surprised by the alliance between Silicon Valley and DC, though (how new is this era?) And I hope over time we can better figure out why philanthrocapitalism and [corporate] content moderation have lost their appeal for Silicon Valley giants.

with my academic bro @joncong.bsky.social: “Rather than investing in regional expertise, Meta opts for a hands-off strategy, leaving fragile ecosystems to navigate a worsening crisis of truth. What they call "letting users decide" is, in reality, just responsibility dodging dressed as empowerment”👇

Great choice of thumbnail to accompany our op-ed about Zuckerberg’s techbro power play flexing exceptional American values against calls for global tech justice. Co authored with my own academic “bro” @tomdivon.bsky.social 🔥💪🏽

Mark Zuckeberg’s announcement of sweeping changes to content moderation at Meta signaled a new alliance between Silicon Valley and Washington against global tech regulation, write Tom Divon and Jonathan Corpus Ong. The stakes are immense, especially in the Global South.

Academic Bros (me + @joncong.bsky.social) vs. Tech Bro: Zuckerberg says 'fact-checking,' but what he really means is: 🔥 Philanthrocapitalism is a trap 🔥 Free speech? Pure hypocrisy 🔥 Meta needs precarious regions to become digital props Check it out 👇

@ckatzenbach.bsky.social, @joncong.bsky.social and I go all in on these tensions in our op-ed, telling the weaponization of philanthrocapitalism, free speech, and geopolitics—give it a read! www.techpolicy.press/tech-bro-pow...

New op-ed with the amazing @tomdivon.bsky.social discusses the *global* implications of Zuckerberg's techbro flex of Silicon Valley's alliance with Trump 2.0. We critique the framing of exceptional American values as shield against global tech justice 1/3 www.techpolicy.press/tech-bro-pow...

It is now all the more important to articulate a tech justice vision for / from the Global South. Big Tech’s Americanization era under Trump 2.0 pushes back hard against global regulation. www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-...

🇵🇭 Pinoy teachers and students cramming their media and comm syllabus for the new semester should check out the free resources available at www.siglaresearch.org/syllabus. Syllabus curated by a team of sociologists, comm researchers with database and explainer videos built by media literacy wizards 👇🏽

"The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China" www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Congrats Sanja with your new book. Would love to host you at GloTech / UMass for your US book tour!

CEO shooter erotics unmasked for us the collective id and unshamed that the darkest kink we seem to share is to f*ck up the whole corrupt system and f*ck while everything burns to the ground

My job has kinda destroyed my 🧠 this year, so I haven't published much — but I do think I've partly extemporized a bunch of talks that speak to the moment. First, this DH keynote on bldg sociotechnical networks for tumultuous times + resisting AI inevitability [1/6] wordsinspace.net/2024/08/09/s...

Excited for this Mel! Perfect companion for my long-haul flight this week 🤩

Last day of Qualitative Research Methods graduate class @sbs-umass.bsky.social. We obvs had to share final reflections over breakfast buffet in the famous Umass dining hall 😛

Follow our wonderful UMass colleague / GloTech Fellow @heesoojang.bsky.social for thought analysis of political situation in South Korea. Her CNN interview 👉🏽 www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-X...

“Worryingly, critical researchers and specialist organizations are redirected by donors away from healing initiatives to conflict frames. 💔”

If you're curious to dive deeper into these questions, check out the new GloTech report PLUS tomorrow's (11/20) webinar, 10 am ET, on Reforming Tech and Democracy Programs for the Global Majority: events.zoom.us/ev/AkC04t2rm...

This event with @joncong.bsky.social tomorrow looks great!

"Global North philanthropies contribute a high quantity of top-down, tools-and-tech-first, and short-term projects"

I'm excited to dive into the full report. But just wanted to say that while I don't look at the healing/conflict contrasts specifically, one of my dissertation findings also highlights the mismatch between the local implementation of FR surveillance and civil society interventions to it..

My letter as editor-in-chief of Communication Monographs to our editorial board in our Fall 2024 newsletter.