PhD Fellow

Ruth Appel

2022 PHD FELLOW

Stanford Profile

Department: Communication

Media and Politics Research Group

 

Misinformation and political polarization on social media: Although the majority of Americans seem to agree that freedom of expression is important to democracy and that social media companies should remove harmful content from the internet, they may disagree over what constitutes harmful online content based on their partisanship. The research project “Censorship Perceptions and Partisanship” in collaboration with Jennifer Pan at Stanford and Margaret Roberts at UCSD investigates the extent to which partisanship obstructs shared understandings of “harmful content” and what constitutes “censorship.” The insights from this study could not only enhance our understanding of partisanship and the perception of censorship, but could also help inform content moderation policies that platforms and government agencies are considering and implementing.