The Politics of Internet Abuse

There are many ways in which the internet is abused to cause human harm. Terrorists use social media for recruitment. Government trolls harass opposition politicians and mass report activist accounts for supposed platform violations. Foreign and domestic actors post videos full of disinformation. Chat apps are used to incite violence. This course will explore political science research on these topics and how online platforms currently respond to these threats. Students will gain an understanding of the most pressing challenges in global communication platforms and a strong foundation for future research and work on mitigating these harms. For the final project, students in this class will partner with students in "CS152: Trust and Safety Engineering" to design policy guidelines to respond to harmful content in a particular country that the CS students will implement as a working bot. No programming skills are needed to enroll in "The Politics of Internet Abuse". Content note: This class will cover real-world harmful behaviors (such as hate speech, harassment and child exploitation) and will expose students to potentially upsetting material.