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About The Seminar: 

Social media users who report content are key allies in the management of online misinformation. However, no research has been conducted yet to understand their role and the different trends underlying their reporting activity. Hubert Etienne presents an original approach to studying misinformation by examining it from the reporting users’ perspective at the content-level and comparatively across regions and platforms. This leads Etienne to propose the first classification of reported content pieces, resulting from a review of items reported on Facebook and Instagram in France, the UK, and the US in June 2020 to observe meaningful distinctions regarding misinformation reporting between countries and platforms as it significantly varies in volume, type, topic, and manipulation technique. Etienne identifies four reporting behaviors, from which he derives four types of noise capable of explaining the majority of the inaccuracy in misinformation reporting. He finally shows that breaking down the user reporting signal into a plurality of behaviors allows us to build a simple classifier trained on a small dataset with a combination of basic users-reports capable of identifying these different types of noise.

Speakers:

Hubert Etienne is a philosopher conducting research in AI ethics and computational philosophy at École Normale Supérieure and Meta AI. His research focuses on social interactions, especially the moderation of problematic interactions in cyberspace. He is a lecturer in AI ethics à Sciences Po, in data economics at HEC Paris and in digital regulation at the National School of Administration. He is currently a visiting fellow at Harvard University.

Julie Owono is the Executive Director of the Content Policy & Society Lab (CPSL) and a fellow of the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) at Stanford University. She is also the Executive Director of digital rights organization Internet Sans Frontières, one of the inaugural members of the Facebook Oversight Board, and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. She holds a Master’s degree in International Law from la Sorbonne University in Paris, and practiced as a lawyer at the Paris Bar.

CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program trains students from any academic department at Stanford to prepare them to write a policy-relevant research thesis with global impact on a subject touching on democracy, development, and the rule of law. For our final Spring 2022 seminar, please join us to hear our Honors Program award winners present their research.

Adrian Scheibler, Firestone Medal winner
 

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Thesis Title: Challenging the State: Western European Regionalism in the Era of Financial Crisis

Abstract: The Global Financial Crisis and its aftershocks have substantially altered the Western European political landscape. But while the literature has extensively focused on the impacts of the economic hardship on traditional party competition, it has often failed to consider the center-periphery dimension. My thesis addresses both the demand for and supply of regionalist ideologies during the crisis. Using an original dataset containing 8 countries, 35 regions, and 128 regionalist parties, it finds that voters did not increase their support for regionalist parties during the crisis and may have even turned their backs on these political actors. In addition, I consider the reactions of regionalist parties in three Spanish autonomous communities - Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia - to the crisis. I find evidence of regionalist mobilization on the issue and even some indications of radicalization of regionalist demands. Taken together, these findings raise interesting implications for the impacts of the financial crisis and the interaction between economic indicators, party competition, and voting patterns.

Michal Skreta, CDDRL Outstanding Thesis winner
 

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Major: Economics and Political Science
Thesis Advisor: Larry Diamond

Thesis Title: Babies, Money, and Power: Estimating Causal Effects of the “Family 500+” Child Benefit Program in Poland using the Synthetic Control Method

Abstract: The ‘Family 500+” child benefit program introduced in April 2016 by the government of Poland has become the single most expensive component of Polish social policy expenditure, yet past studies have rarely estimated the effects of the program through causal methods. In a novel application within this context, I propose using the synthetic control method as a causal identification strategy to empirically estimate country-level treatment effects of the program on fertility, poverty, and inequality. Treating 500+ as a natural experiment, I compare observational data from actual Poland with a synthetic counterfactual of Poland constructed from a weighted donor pool of other European countries through a data-driven selection procedure. My findings on fertility metrics are consistent with prior studies, being ambiguous and insignificant, indicating that the main short-term objective of the program has not been achieved. Meanwhile, I find that the program causally reduced the rate of people at risk of poverty in Poland by over 16%, including by more than 23% among children. I also find that the child benefit has led to a significant reduction in income inequality, being causally responsible for a decline of 5.9% in the Gini index and of 8.0% in the income quintile share ratio. While significant, the results on poverty and inequality are weaker than initially anticipated. My results are robust under in-space treatment reassignment placebo studies. The findings contribute to a growing literature on the causal effects of child benefit policy interventions applied on an aggregate unit level.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

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Congress has just passed legislation requiring owners and operators of critical infrastructure to notify the federal government following a cyber breach. The requirement, made more urgent by fears that Russia’s war with Ukraine will spill over into attacks on America's energy, financial, and other critical infrastructure, is the latest entry to the growing catalog of cybersecurity-related laws, including new state measures and proposed Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure requirements.  

Policymakers at the state and federal level continue to search for the right balance of collaboration and enforcement. This one-hour session will explore recent developments in cybersecurity law, offering both pragmatic advice on compliance and litigation strategy as well as big picture insights on the direction of U.S. cybersecurity policy. 

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Once upon a time, there was a seductive story about twin revolutions, a political one in France and an industrial one in Britain, that supposedly ushered in our modern world. This narrative never sat well with empirical realities, yet it lives on in textbooks. What might be a more persuasive framework for a global history of the modern era? What are the implications for research and the teaching of history?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

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Kotkin has published two volumes of a three-volume history of the world as seen from Stalin’s desk: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (Penguin, November 2014) and Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (Penguin, October 2017). The final installment, Totalitarian Superpower, 1941-1990s, is underway. He writes reviews and essays for Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Wall Street Journal, and served as the business book reviewer for The New York Times Sunday Business Section. He is an occasional consultant for governments and some private companies. PhD UC Berkeley (1988).

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Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world.

In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such “spin dictators,” describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

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At this time, in-person attendance is limited to Stanford affiliates only. We continue to welcome our greater community to join virtually via Zoom.

Read the full transcript of President Barack Obama's keynote.

THE TRUST PROBLEM: What is the role of the U.S. government in facilitating consensus and reducing polarization at home?

• Moderator: Renée DiResta

• Speakers: Ben Ginsberg, Larry Diamond, Nicole Wong, Rashad Robinson

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President Barack Obama will deliver a keynote speech about disinformation and challenges to democracy in the digital information realm. The Obama Foundation is co-hosting the event.

DESIGNING FOR DEMOCRATIC DISCOURSE: What is the role for media and tech companies to ensure quality, access, and participation?

• Moderator: Marietje Schaake

• Speakers: Chris Best, Maria Ressa, Peter Hamby, Safiya Noble

THE THREAT OF DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM: What are the most effective ways to defend open democratic systems in a global digitized world?

• Moderator: Eileen Donahoe

• Speakers: Ambassador Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen, Ben Rhodes, Halimah Delaine Prado, Peter Pomerantsev, Shanthi Kalathil

The student lottery administered by FSI is now closed. Randomly selected students have been notified via email.

For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

About the Event: Existing literature posits that the main challenge for nuclear security guarantees lies in making the promise of protection sufficiently credible. If allies do not believe their guarantor will actually come to their aid, they may seek alternate means of protection, including by investing in nuclear infrastructure. Credible security guarantees, on the other hand, are thought to reassure allies. In contrast to this approach, Dr. Sukin argues that credible nuclear guarantees can backfire. These guarantees can cause clients to fear that their guarantors will drag them into a precipitous nuclear conflict. Fears of nuclear escalation by their guarantor can drive clients to distance themselves from their alliance or seek stronger independent nuclear capabilities. Using survey experiments and case studies of U.S. alliances in East Asia and Europe, this project explores the risks of credible U.S. nuclear security guarantees.

About the Speaker: Dr. Lauren Sukin is currently a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. In September 2022, she will join the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science as an Assistant Professor of International Relations. Dr. Sukin holds a Ph.D. (2021) and M.A. (2020) from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. She also holds A.B.s from the Departments of Political Science and Literary Arts at Brown University (2016). Dr. Sukin’s research examines issues of international security, focusing on the role of nuclear weapons in international politics.