Ethan Zuckerman
Biographic Data
| ID | 245194 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ethan Zuckerman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ethan |
| FAMILY NAME | Zuckerman |
| SIGNATURE | ZUCKERMAN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5970-9116 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Civic Information Architecture
In the six years since the Our Common Purpose report was released, dramatic shifts to the information ecosystem have transformed the relationship between citizens and the media, providing serious challenges to an informed and participatory democracy. Journalism faces business model challenges aggravated by a shift away from search and toward AI, as well as governmental attacks on journalistic independence and on public media. Influential technolo…
TubeStats and TokStats
YouTube and TikTok are two of the most popular digital communications platforms in the world, playing a disproportionately large role in global communications infrastructure in general and the consumption and dissemination of information in particular. As neither platform provides adequate mechanisms to produce representative samples of the content they host, researchers largely depend on opportunistic samples of popular, recommended, or otherwis…
The loyal client
The client that is used to connect to a server serves a function that is almost as important as the server itself. The client governs how a user is able to interact with a digital system, the actions they are able to take, what information they can view, and what information is being shared. This paper presents a vision of a Loyal Client, a client that is aligned with the preferences of the end user rather than those of the platform. This is an o…
The Quotidian Web and the Accidental Archive
Video hosting sites like YouTube are commonly understood through their professional creators and viral content, but they are also rich, global repositories of cultural memory and everyday life. However, their opaque, algorithmically optimized, commercial structure poses challenges to research. We argue that such platforms function as “accidental archives” that capture details of quotidian life that often escape curatorial intention. To consider t…
One Platform, Four Languages
This study presents a comparative analysis of language-specific random samples of YouTube videos, focusing on English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. We produce a large random sample, retrieve metadata, calibrate and deploy language-detection software, and extract four high-confidence language samples. Through an analysis of upload dates, popularity, duration, and category metadata, we highlight patterns and anomalies among our samples. For example…
Improving Social Media with Middleware
Middleware is software that can give users increased control over their social media experience, allowing them to protect their privacy, customize their recommendations, and understand the spread and impact of content they create. We believe middleware could complement policy efforts and reforms made by social media platforms to improve user experiences on social media, while avoiding freedom of expression questions that plague the regulation of …
From Community Governance to Customer Service and Back Again
As online platforms grow, they find themselves increasingly trying to balance two competing priorities: individual rights and public health. This has coincided with the professionalization of platforms' trust and safety operations-what we call the 'customer service' model of online governance. As professional trust and safety teams attempt to balance individual rights and public health, platforms face a crisis of legitimacy, with decisions in the…
Dead-and-dying platforms
This roundtable, which unfolded over many months in 2021, brought fourteen technologists and scholars together for a full-fledged discussion of platforms and death as a metaphor. The discussion proceeds with each person responding to the previous question and then posing one of their own. Some contributors discuss the ethical quandaries that await researchers attempting to exhume digital lifeworlds of the past. Others contemplate who gets a say i…
Writing the Revolution
Why study media ecosystems
Much as ecology emerged from biology as scientists began studying the complex interactions between organisms in their environments, a shift is happening in communication and media studies regarding analysis of social media. The complex relationships between user-generated social media and professionally created news media are best understood as a complex media ecosystem with its own emergent behaviors that only become visible when studied from a …
Moderating the Public Sphere
QAnon and the Emergence of the Unreal
The Grass Valley Charter School in northern California teaches 500 students from kindergarten to eighth grade using principles from Outward Bound and other "active learning" methods. Recently the school has been in the news not because of its pedagogy, but due to the effects of an unusual eruption of unreality
New Media, New Civics?
Dissatisfaction with existing governments, a broad shift to “post‐representative democracy” and the rise of participatory media are leading toward the visibility of different forms of civic participation. “Participatory civics” uses tools of participatory media and relies on theories of change beyond influencing representative governments to seek change. This article offers a framework to describe participatory civics in terms of theories of chan…
The battle for ‘Trayvon Martin’
One of the biggest news stories of 2012, the killing of Trayvon Martin, nearly disappeared from public view, initially receiving only cursory local news coverage. But the story gained attention and controversy over Martin’s death dominated headlines, airwaves, and Twitter for months, thanks to a savvy publicist working on behalf of the victim’s parents and a series of campaigns offline and online. Using the theories of networked gatekeeping and n…
International reporting in the age of participatory media
Meet the bridgebloggers
Bridging the Differences between Cultures through Weblogs
Why study media ecosystems
Much as ecology emerged from biology as scientists began studying the complex interactions between organisms in their environments, a shift is happening in communication and media studies regarding analysis of social media. The complex relationships between user-generated social media and professionally created news media are best understood as a complex media ecosystem with its own emergent behaviors that only become visible when studied from a …
QAnon and the Emergence of the Unreal
The Grass Valley Charter School in northern California teaches 500 students from kindergarten to eighth grade using principles from Outward Bound and other "active learning" methods. Recently the school has been in the news not because of its pedagogy, but due to the effects of an unusual eruption of unreality
From Community Governance to Customer Service and Back Again
As online platforms grow, they find themselves increasingly trying to balance two competing priorities: individual rights and public health. This has coincided with the professionalization of platforms' trust and safety operations-what we call the 'customer service' model of online governance. As professional trust and safety teams attempt to balance individual rights and public health, platforms face a crisis of legitimacy, with decisions in the…
Meet the bridgebloggers
Improving Social Media with Middleware
Middleware is software that can give users increased control over their social media experience, allowing them to protect their privacy, customize their recommendations, and understand the spread and impact of content they create. We believe middleware could complement policy efforts and reforms made by social media platforms to improve user experiences on social media, while avoiding freedom of expression questions that plague the regulation of …
Dead-and-dying platforms
This roundtable, which unfolded over many months in 2021, brought fourteen technologists and scholars together for a full-fledged discussion of platforms and death as a metaphor. The discussion proceeds with each person responding to the previous question and then posing one of their own. Some contributors discuss the ethical quandaries that await researchers attempting to exhume digital lifeworlds of the past. Others contemplate who gets a say i…
International reporting in the age of participatory media
One Platform, Four Languages
This study presents a comparative analysis of language-specific random samples of YouTube videos, focusing on English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. We produce a large random sample, retrieve metadata, calibrate and deploy language-detection software, and extract four high-confidence language samples. Through an analysis of upload dates, popularity, duration, and category metadata, we highlight patterns and anomalies among our samples. For example…
Bridging the Differences between Cultures through Weblogs
Meet the bridgebloggers
International reporting in the age of participatory media
New Media, New Civics?
Dissatisfaction with existing governments, a broad shift to “post‐representative democracy” and the rise of participatory media are leading toward the visibility of different forms of civic participation. “Participatory civics” uses tools of participatory media and relies on theories of change beyond influencing representative governments to seek change. This article offers a framework to describe participatory civics in terms of theories of chan…
The battle for ‘Trayvon Martin’
One of the biggest news stories of 2012, the killing of Trayvon Martin, nearly disappeared from public view, initially receiving only cursory local news coverage. But the story gained attention and controversy over Martin’s death dominated headlines, airwaves, and Twitter for months, thanks to a savvy publicist working on behalf of the victim’s parents and a series of campaigns offline and online. Using the theories of networked gatekeeping and n…
Moderating the Public Sphere
QAnon and the Emergence of the Unreal
The Grass Valley Charter School in northern California teaches 500 students from kindergarten to eighth grade using principles from Outward Bound and other "active learning" methods. Recently the school has been in the news not because of its pedagogy, but due to the effects of an unusual eruption of unreality
Why study media ecosystems
Much as ecology emerged from biology as scientists began studying the complex interactions between organisms in their environments, a shift is happening in communication and media studies regarding analysis of social media. The complex relationships between user-generated social media and professionally created news media are best understood as a complex media ecosystem with its own emergent behaviors that only become visible when studied from a …
Dead-and-dying platforms
This roundtable, which unfolded over many months in 2021, brought fourteen technologists and scholars together for a full-fledged discussion of platforms and death as a metaphor. The discussion proceeds with each person responding to the previous question and then posing one of their own. Some contributors discuss the ethical quandaries that await researchers attempting to exhume digital lifeworlds of the past. Others contemplate who gets a say i…
Writing the Revolution
From Community Governance to Customer Service and Back Again
As online platforms grow, they find themselves increasingly trying to balance two competing priorities: individual rights and public health. This has coincided with the professionalization of platforms' trust and safety operations-what we call the 'customer service' model of online governance. As professional trust and safety teams attempt to balance individual rights and public health, platforms face a crisis of legitimacy, with decisions in the…
Improving Social Media with Middleware
Middleware is software that can give users increased control over their social media experience, allowing them to protect their privacy, customize their recommendations, and understand the spread and impact of content they create. We believe middleware could complement policy efforts and reforms made by social media platforms to improve user experiences on social media, while avoiding freedom of expression questions that plague the regulation of …
One Platform, Four Languages
This study presents a comparative analysis of language-specific random samples of YouTube videos, focusing on English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. We produce a large random sample, retrieve metadata, calibrate and deploy language-detection software, and extract four high-confidence language samples. Through an analysis of upload dates, popularity, duration, and category metadata, we highlight patterns and anomalies among our samples. For example…
Civic Information Architecture
In the six years since the Our Common Purpose report was released, dramatic shifts to the information ecosystem have transformed the relationship between citizens and the media, providing serious challenges to an informed and participatory democracy. Journalism faces business model challenges aggravated by a shift away from search and toward AI, as well as governmental attacks on journalistic independence and on public media. Influential technolo…
TubeStats and TokStats
YouTube and TikTok are two of the most popular digital communications platforms in the world, playing a disproportionately large role in global communications infrastructure in general and the consumption and dissemination of information in particular. As neither platform provides adequate mechanisms to produce representative samples of the content they host, researchers largely depend on opportunistic samples of popular, recommended, or otherwis…
The loyal client
The client that is used to connect to a server serves a function that is almost as important as the server itself. The client governs how a user is able to interact with a digital system, the actions they are able to take, what information they can view, and what information is being shared. This paper presents a vision of a Loyal Client, a client that is aligned with the preferences of the end user rather than those of the platform. This is an o…
The Quotidian Web and the Accidental Archive
Video hosting sites like YouTube are commonly understood through their professional creators and viral content, but they are also rich, global repositories of cultural memory and everyday life. However, their opaque, algorithmically optimized, commercial structure poses challenges to research. We argue that such platforms function as “accidental archives” that capture details of quotidian life that often escape curatorial intention. To consider t…
Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Social Media and Politics (6 works) · Public relations (5 works) · World Wide Web (5 works) · Citizen journalism (4 works) · Media studies (4 works)