David Lazer, Northeastern University

The emergent logic of the Online Information Ecosystem

The first part of this presentation examines the emergent and sometimes paradoxical logic of the internet news ecosystem, in particular: (1) collectively, news diets have become far more concentrated in a small number of outlets; (2) however, individuals have relatively diverse news diets– almost certainly far more diverse than was plausible pre-Internet (as measured by number of unique content producers); (3) the social-algorithmic curation system of the Internet tends to point people to content with their preferences, sometimes in unlikely places. The greater diversity of consumption of news measured by number of unique outlets may not actually result in diversity of content.
The second part of the presentation will discuss the development of the National Internet Observatory, a large, NSF-supported effort to create a privacy-preserving data collection/data analytic system for the broader research community.