News
Stanford PACS Faculty Co-Director Robb Willer co-authors an op-ed for the New York Times
In a recent NYTimes article, Robb Willer and Jan Voelkel explain why progressive candidates’ policies must be consistent with widely held values like family, security, and the American Dream in order to build support beyond their base in #Election2020.
Digital Impact: Reflections from Berlin
Sometimes, as our colleagues from Tactical Tech Collective reminded us in Berlin, you need to practice the art of seeing sideways. Look directly at something long enough and it loses meaning. But look at the empty space around it, squint at adjacencies, or, in my case, hear new voices asking new versions of shared questions, and new insights will emerge....
Digital Impact: Reflections from Brussels
The European leg of the Digital Impact event series kicked off in Brussels on 13 June. Not surprisingly to those who follow EU policy, the emerging European digital policy landscape permeated the day’s discussions. We were fortunate to have participants and speakers from digital rights groups and corporate policy offices to share insights on the many ways that European policies...
Digital Impact: Reflections from London
Digital Impact London took place in the midst of a week that had everyone in Europe asking questions about the present and the future – including a deadly building fire, a terrorist attack against a mosque, and an electoral shakeup amidst planning for the UK’s changing role in Europe. Londoners famously “carry on”, and the Digital Impact discussion at Imperial...
Digital Impact: Reflections from Brisbane
On July 29 More than 100 Australian social sector leaders spent a beautiful Saturday in Brisbane discussing the possibilities and responsibilities of digital civil society. Several themes dominated the day: the importance of the “people” part of digital data, the ways digital technologies can highlight and even amplify existing social disparities, and a clear enthusiasm for building connections across sectors,...
Digital Impact: Reflections from New York City
The Digital Civil Society Lab welcomed 80 civil society leaders to the Digital Impact World Tour convening in New York City on October 23. Given the depth and breadth of the academic and civic tech communities in New York, the panel discussions were particularly illuminating. Throughout the previous eight global conversations we have convened this year around the “possibilities and...
Digital Impact: Reflections from Mumbai
In India, scale is everything. An organization that serves more than one million meals per day to schoolchildren reaches only 1% of the eligible population. Its newly-implemented Aadhaar system, with more than 1 billion registrants, is the largest biometric database controlled by a nation, but only the second largest such database in the world, falling behind Facebook’s in scale. As...
Digital Impact: Reflections from Medellin
Digital Impact Medellin was the final international stop on the Digital Impact World Tour before we wrap things up in Kansas City in May. It also offered a fun twist – for the first time on the tour, we partnered not only with local host MAKAIA but with a global thematic ally, the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) of the...
Press Release: Glasnost! Nine Ways Facebook Can Make Itself a Better Forum for Free Speech and Democracy
Read Full Article Here. Press Release Glasnost! Nine Ways Facebook Can Make Itself a Better Forum for Free Speech and Democracy Facebook could make nine “incremental” changes to ensure it becomes a better forum for free speech and democracy, according to a new report by academics at the University of Oxford in the UK and Stanford University in the...
The Program on Democracy and the Internet joins Kofi Annan Foundation Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age
The Program on Democracy and the Internet will join the Kofi Annan Foundation to convene the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age to “examine and review the opportunities and challenges for electoral integrity created by technological innovations”. The foundation named Stephen Steadman, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) and deputy director of the Center on...