Hi all,

The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, February 21, at 8:30 AM PST / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here. The theme for this showcase is Platform Governance and Policies.

You are welcome to watch via the YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1xYwRw1rHU. As usual, you can join the conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live. 

This month's presentation: 

Sociotechnical Designs for Democratic and Pluralistic Governance of Social Media and AI

By Amy X. Zhang, University of Washington

Decisions about policies when using widely-deployed technologies, including social media and more recently, generative AI, are often made in a centralized and top-down fashion. Yet these systems are used by millions of people, with a diverse set of preferences and norms. Who gets to decide what are the rules, and what should the procedures be for deciding them---and must we all abide by the same ones? In this talk, I draw on theories and lessons from offline governance to reimagine how sociotechnical systems could be designed to provide greater agency and voice to everyday users and communities. This includes the design and development of: 1) personal moderation and curation controls that are usable and understandable to laypeople, 2) tools for authoring and carrying out governance to suit a community's needs and values, and 3) decision-making workflows for large-scale democratic alignment that are legitimate and consistent.

Best,

Kinneret

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Kinneret Gordon Lead Research Community Officer Wikimedia Foundation