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 & Programming
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
Taking Tech Back
AI Impact Atlas
Subterranean Convergence
Open-Source AI as Democratic Infrastructure
AI Shock
Automated Futures
Multimodal Climate AI
Data in the Dark
Automation’s Ecologies
Visual Misinformation
AI & the Environment
Student Technology Council
Technology & Disinformation
Social Contagions
Gender & Tech
Co-Opting AI
Urban Digital Twins
Technology & Democracy Exchange
Data Center Policies
Descendant-Led Digital Humanities Lab & Network
Cryptocurrency & Democracy
Featured Resources
Data Center Policy Database
This comprehensive publicly available database for local, state, and federal U.S. data center policy tracks more than 700 data center policies across the U.S. from the past few years. The database is searchable by key issue, date, level of government, or status. Learn more and explore the database.
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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
FLiNG Report Launch: How Finfluencers, Fin-Tech, and FOMO Shape Young Adults’ Financial Well-being
Cryptocurrency & Democracy
Faculty & Postdoc Publications
Imagining “Us” and “Them”: Emotional Logics of Sovereignty and National Belonging among Chinese Youth
A paper co-authored by DTD Lab postdoc, Wendy Zhou, examines how Chinese youth envision China’s future and how these visions inform their attitudes toward Hong Kong and Taiwan. By foregrounding the interplay between imagined futures of “us” and emotional evaluations of “them,” the study shows how debates over territorial sovereignty are filtered through everyday emotions and sense of national belonging.
The AI Factory: Data Centers, Power, and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania
A report co-authored by DTD Lab postdoc, Cella Sum, shows that data centers are a lightning rod issue for broad, diverse communities that desire both prosperity and power. Meanwhile, for powerful corporations, data centers represent an Achilles heel. A detailed exploration of how technology is impacting people's lives, this report reveals the limits of AI’s supposed inevitability within Pennsylvania’s borders and beyond them.
Synthetic Nights: Machine and Human Learning in 24-Hour Cities
Jess Reia, DTD Lab faculty co-lead, has published a new open access paper, in which they ask whether algorithms can understand or shape the urban night. In the paper, Jess shows how the opacities and refusals of nocturnal life expose the limits of machine learning while making the case for expanding what counts as data in our cities.
Join our vibrant lab and help us explore the intersection of democracy and digital technology.
Current Opportunities