The Stanford Cyber Policy Center, a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School, is Stanford University's research center for the interdisciplinary study of issues at the nexus of technology, governance and public policy focused on digital technologies impacting democracy, security, and geopolitics globally.
Spring Seminar Series | APRIL - JUNE
The Spring Seminar Series kicks off April 11th. For dates and speaker list visit the Spring Seminar Series page. Titles and abstracts coming soon.
The mission of the Global Digital Policy Incubator is to inspire policy and governance innovations that reinforce democratic values, universal human rights, and the rule of law in the digital realm. We serve as a collaboration hub for the development of norms, guidelines, and laws that enhance freedom, security, and trust in the global digital ecosystem. The bottom line question that guides this initiative: How do we help governments and private sector technology companies establish governance norms, policies, and processes that allow citizens and society to reap the upside benefits of technology, while protecting against the downside risks?
The Stanford Internet Observatory is a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on social media. Under the program direction of computer security expert Alex Stamos, the Observatory was created to learn about the abuse of the internet in real time, to develop a novel curriculum on trust and safety that is a first in computer science, and to translate our research discoveries into training and policy innovations for the public good.
The Program on Democracy and the Internet envisions digital technologies supporting rather than subverting democracy by maximizing the benefits and minimizing the threats through changes in policy, technology, and social and ethical technological norms. Through knowledge creation and education, and by leveraging the convening power of Stanford University, PDI creates and shares original empirical research around how digital technologies are impacting democracy to inform and educate decision-makers in the field, including the next generation of technologists, business leaders, and policymakers.
The Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance (GTG) is dedicated to world-class scholarly and policy-oriented research on the political, legal, and economic implications of digital innovation and global competition. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and a proliferation of smart, connected devices will revolutionize warfare and create new challenges and opportunities in statecraft. They will enable automation in countless domains, and lead to as of yet unknown applications that catalyze new industries and business models—and in the process, massively alter how economic value is created, captured and distributed, with ripple effects in the domestic politics of nations and the broader global political economy.
The Program on Platform Regulation, headed by Daphne Keller, focuses on current or emerging law governing Internet platforms, with an emphasis on laws’ consequences for the rights and interests of Internet users and the public.
The Stanford Social Media Lab works on understanding psychological and interpersonal processes in social media. The team specializes in using computational linguistics and behavioral experiments to understand how the words we use can reveal psychological and social dynamics, such as deception and trust, emotional dynamics, and relationships.
In a new blog post, Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at the Cyber Policy Center, looks at the need for transparency when it comes to content moderation and asks, what kind of transparency do we really want?
India' information technology ministry recently finalized a set of rules that the government argues will make online service providers more accountable for their users’ bad behavior. Noncompliance may expose a provider to legal liability from which it is otherwise immune.
Researchers from Stanford University, the University of Washington, Graphika and Atlantic Council’s DFRLab released their findings in ‘The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election.’
The audio chat app “Clubhouse” went viral among Chinese-speaking audiences. Stanford Internet Observatory examines whether user data was protected, and why that matters.
As Parler gained millions of users - and plenty of notoriety - in recent months, understanding the dynamics of the platform has become an increasing priority. A report by the Stanford Internet Observatory analyzes three Parler datasets to understand a platform designed for non-moderation, and to map its domestic and increasingly international growth.
Riana Pfefferkorn joined the Stanford Internet Observatory as a research scholar in December. She comes from Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, where she was the Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity.
Wikipedia celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. This blog post, the second of two, looks at how open source investigators can conduct research on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. This is the first of two blog posts exploring the use, misuse, and ultimate resilience of this open, community-edited platform.
Renée DiResta is leading the fight against online disinformation. On the World Class Podcast, she describes what it’s like to expose malign actors in the emerging world of ceaseless propaganda and conspiracy theories.
