We are particularly interested in research that addresses key topics at the intersection of digital technology and democracy and bring together a cohort of researchers addressing these issues at global, regional, and local levels. The Lab creates collaboration and exchange between academia and thought-leaders, technologists, policymakers, activists, civil society organizations, artists, and creative practitioners, taking a broadly transdisciplinary and global approach.
Research
Our Approach
The DTD Lab works to explore how rapidly evolving digital technologies can challenge, but might also fortify, democratic institutions and practices.
Areas of Focus
Data in the Dark
Automation’s Ecologies
Visual Misinformation
AI & the Environment
Student Technology Council
Technology & Disinformation
Social Contagions
Gender and Tech
Co-Opting AI
Urban Digital Twins
Technology & Democracy Exchange
Data Center Policies
Descendant-Led Digital Humanities Lab & Network
Cryptocurrency & Democracy
Featured Resources
Reimagining AI for Environmental Justice and Creativity
This collection of essays emerged from a Fall 2024 workshop and is designed to become a resource for a broad audience with various backgrounds, skills, and interests. The ideas featured help reflect upon the challenges ahead when building, using and evaluating AI in different contexts. Learn more and download a free copy.
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Insights from the Visual Generative AI and Propaganda Convening
This report provides a summary of Visual Generative AI and Propaganda Convening held in September 2024. The event brought together experts to examine the challenges posed by increasingly sophisticated AI-generated visual content on public trust and democratic processes. Learn more and download a free copy.
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Video Library
Faculty & Postdoc Publications
Online propagation of emotions: A study of resharing dynamics on social media following celebrity suicides
Ehsan Nouri, DTD Lab postdoctoral research fellow, co-authors a paper about emotional contagion on social media, particularly following shocking and tragic events, which often unfolds through widespread resharing, amplifying affective responses that are typically intense and negative.
The Measured Body
Mona Sloane, DTD Lab faculty co-lead, and co-authors argue that redesigning motion capture systems to be more representative of real human bodies and movements could make them fairer and more useful for applications such as law enforcement and medical diagnostics.
AI’s Sociological Era
In an introduction to a new Social Science Computer Review Special Issue "What Is Sociological About AI?", Mona Sloane, faculty co-lead of the DTD Lab, outlines how AI’s cultural meanings, material effects, political entanglements, reliance on human labor and data, and embeddedness in status and power make it a fundamentally sociological phenomenon.
Join our vibrant lab and help us explore the intersection of democracy and digital technology.
Current Opportunities