John Palfrey
Biographic Data
| ID | 318200 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Palfrey |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Palfrey |
| SIGNATURE | PALFREY J |
| AFFILIATIONS | John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1953 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Social Media has Aged, It’s Time It Got Wise
As social media platforms mature, their user base is simultaneously aging, with older adults now representing the fastest-growing demographic of users. Despite persistent myths contrasting “digital natives” with “clueless seniors,” empirical evidence demonstrates that socioeconomic status, rather than age, is the primary driver of digital inequality. The study, design, and regulation of social media must undergo a paradigm shift to embrace older …
Older Adults’ Response Strategies to Misinformation on Social Media
Social media offer the opportunity for much public discourse, but also come with the potential to spread misinformation far and wide. This study investigates how older adults respond to misinformation on social media and how their responses vary by sociodemographic factors and digital skills. Based on survey data collected in 2023 from 2000 adults ages 60+, we find that many users take a multifaceted approach to assessing false or misleading info…
Future Problem-Solving: Artificial Intelligence & Other Wildly Complex Issues
Imagine a bright future for philanthropic and government problem-solving. There is a version of the development of artificial intelligence, open datasets, and equitable philanthropic practices that could enable societies to solve their most complex problems much more effectively than is possible today. Philanthropy has been shifting from a model of charitable giving toward support for systems-level change. In recent decades, new digital technolog…
Sharenthood: Why We Should Think before We Talk about Our Kids Online
From baby pictures in the cloud to a high school's digital surveillance system: how adults unwittingly compromise children's privacy online. Our children's first digital footprints are made before they can walk—even before they are born—as parents use fertility apps to aid conception, post ultrasound images, and share their baby's hospital mug shot. Then, in rapid succession come terabytes of baby pictures stored in the cloud, digital baby monito…
Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education
Design Choices for Libraries in the Digital-Plus Era
Libraries are more important, not less so, in a digitally networked era. Despite the fact that today's mobile devices feature Google's search box and Apple's Siri to help us find a quick answer to just about any question, we ought to be investing more capital than ever in our public libraries. We need libraries in the digital era to provide a public option to ensure sustained, free, equitable access to knowledge and preservation of our cultural a…
Intellectual Property Strategy
Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’
Facebook, like many communication services and social media sites, uses its Terms of Service (ToS) to forbid children under the age of 13 from creating an account. Such prohibitions are not uncommon in response to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which seeks to empower parents by requiring commercial Web site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. Given economic costs, social conce…
Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace
Reports on a new generation of Internet controls that establish a new normative terrain in which surveillance and censorship are routine. Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world, in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states. The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; Chin…
Mapping the Arabic blogosphere: Politics and dissent online
This study explores the structure and content of the Arabic blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs. We identified a base network of approximately 35,000 Arabic-language blogs, mapped the 6000 most-connected blogs, and hand coded over 3000. The study is a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arabic-speaking world, which mainly clusters nationally. We found the most politi…
Four Phases of Internet Regulation
The four phases of Internet regulation are the “open Internet” period, from the network’s birth through about 2000; “access denied,” through about 2005; “access controlled,” through the present day (2010); and “access contested,” the phase into which we are entering. In this article, I describe the role of technology and its use in limiting access to knowledge during four phases of development of the Internet. The possibilities associated with ho…
Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering
A study of Internet blocking and filtering around the world: analyses by leading researchers and survey results that document filtering practices in dozens of countries. Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens—most often about politics, but sometimes relating to sexuality, culture, or religion. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet f…
Trusting the Net in Developing Countries: Pear Production of Governance
The Problem of Secrecy
1For critical evaluations of atomic secrecy, see Walter Gellhorn, Security, Loyalty and Science (Ithaca, 1950), p. 34 et seq.; Alan Barth, Loyalty of Men (New York, 1951), p. 177 et seq.; Ralph Lapp, New Force (New York, 1953), p. 206 et seq. 2 David E. Lilienthal, Free the Atom, Collier's, June 17, 1950, p. 13; Gordon Dean, Press Conference, June 25, 1953, AEC press release. 3 Representative W. Sterling Cole, The Hydrogen Bomb: A Panacea? 96 Con…
Mapping the Arabic blogosphere: Politics and dissent online
This study explores the structure and content of the Arabic blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs. We identified a base network of approximately 35,000 Arabic-language blogs, mapped the 6000 most-connected blogs, and hand coded over 3000. The study is a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arabic-speaking world, which mainly clusters nationally. We found the most politi…
Four Phases of Internet Regulation
The four phases of Internet regulation are the “open Internet” period, from the network’s birth through about 2000; “access denied,” through about 2005; “access controlled,” through the present day (2010); and “access contested,” the phase into which we are entering. In this article, I describe the role of technology and its use in limiting access to knowledge during four phases of development of the Internet. The possibilities associated with ho…
The Problem of Secrecy
1For critical evaluations of atomic secrecy, see Walter Gellhorn, Security, Loyalty and Science (Ithaca, 1950), p. 34 et seq.; Alan Barth, Loyalty of Men (New York, 1951), p. 177 et seq.; Ralph Lapp, New Force (New York, 1953), p. 206 et seq. 2 David E. Lilienthal, Free the Atom, Collier's, June 17, 1950, p. 13; Gordon Dean, Press Conference, June 25, 1953, AEC press release. 3 Representative W. Sterling Cole, The Hydrogen Bomb: A Panacea? 96 Con…
Trusting the Net in Developing Countries: Pear Production of Governance
Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering
A study of Internet blocking and filtering around the world: analyses by leading researchers and survey results that document filtering practices in dozens of countries. Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens—most often about politics, but sometimes relating to sexuality, culture, or religion. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet f…
Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace
Reports on a new generation of Internet controls that establish a new normative terrain in which surveillance and censorship are routine. Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world, in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states. The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; Chin…
Mapping the Arabic blogosphere: Politics and dissent online
This study explores the structure and content of the Arabic blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs. We identified a base network of approximately 35,000 Arabic-language blogs, mapped the 6000 most-connected blogs, and hand coded over 3000. The study is a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arabic-speaking world, which mainly clusters nationally. We found the most politi…
Four Phases of Internet Regulation
The four phases of Internet regulation are the “open Internet” period, from the network’s birth through about 2000; “access denied,” through about 2005; “access controlled,” through the present day (2010); and “access contested,” the phase into which we are entering. In this article, I describe the role of technology and its use in limiting access to knowledge during four phases of development of the Internet. The possibilities associated with ho…
Intellectual Property Strategy
Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’
Facebook, like many communication services and social media sites, uses its Terms of Service (ToS) to forbid children under the age of 13 from creating an account. Such prohibitions are not uncommon in response to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which seeks to empower parents by requiring commercial Web site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. Given economic costs, social conce…
Design Choices for Libraries in the Digital-Plus Era
Libraries are more important, not less so, in a digitally networked era. Despite the fact that today's mobile devices feature Google's search box and Apple's Siri to help us find a quick answer to just about any question, we ought to be investing more capital than ever in our public libraries. We need libraries in the digital era to provide a public option to ensure sustained, free, equitable access to knowledge and preservation of our cultural a…
Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education
Sharenthood: Why We Should Think before We Talk about Our Kids Online
From baby pictures in the cloud to a high school's digital surveillance system: how adults unwittingly compromise children's privacy online. Our children's first digital footprints are made before they can walk—even before they are born—as parents use fertility apps to aid conception, post ultrasound images, and share their baby's hospital mug shot. Then, in rapid succession come terabytes of baby pictures stored in the cloud, digital baby monito…
Older Adults’ Response Strategies to Misinformation on Social Media
Social media offer the opportunity for much public discourse, but also come with the potential to spread misinformation far and wide. This study investigates how older adults respond to misinformation on social media and how their responses vary by sociodemographic factors and digital skills. Based on survey data collected in 2023 from 2000 adults ages 60+, we find that many users take a multifaceted approach to assessing false or misleading info…
Future Problem-Solving: Artificial Intelligence & Other Wildly Complex Issues
Imagine a bright future for philanthropic and government problem-solving. There is a version of the development of artificial intelligence, open datasets, and equitable philanthropic practices that could enable societies to solve their most complex problems much more effectively than is possible today. Philanthropy has been shifting from a model of charitable giving toward support for systems-level change. In recent decades, new digital technolog…
Social Media has Aged, It’s Time It Got Wise
As social media platforms mature, their user base is simultaneously aging, with older adults now representing the fastest-growing demographic of users. Despite persistent myths contrasting “digital natives” with “clueless seniors,” empirical evidence demonstrates that socioeconomic status, rather than age, is the primary driver of digital inequality. The study, design, and regulation of social media must undergo a paradigm shift to embrace older …
Computer Science (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · The Internet (6 works) · Business (5 works) · World Wide Web (5 works) · Internet privacy (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Social Media and Politics (4 works)