Since the 2016 election, great attention has been paid to the impact of digital technologies on democracy in the United States and around the world.  Foreign intervention into the U.S. campaign through social media and online advertising, including the rise of "fake news" and computational propaganda, exacerbated concerns that new technologies posed a substantial threat to the normal workings of  the U.S. electoral process.  These concerns remain for 2020, alongside new threats related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  With in-person campaigning, voter mobilization, and even voting itself hindered by the pandemic, digital technologies promise to play an even more important role in 2020.  

On December 10, 2020, the Stanford Cyber Policy Center will bring together scholars, tech platforms, principals from the digital campaigns, journalists, and other key experts to explore the effect of digital technologies on the 2020 Election.  The conference will explore the role of digital technologies on election administration, campaign tactics, political advertising, the news media, foreign propaganda efforts, and the broader campaign information ecosystem.  It will also consider how changes in platform policies affected the campaign and information environment, and whether lessons learned in the 2020 elections suggest that further changes are warranted.  

9AM:   Introduction: Kelly Born, Stanford Cyber Policy Center

9:10:    Findings from the Stanford/MIT Healthy Elections Project:  Nate Persily, Stanford Law School

9:30:    Trends in 2020 Political Advertising:  Erika Franklin Fowler, Wesleyan Media Project

9:50:    Online Political Transparency:  Laura Edelson, New York University Political Ads Project

10:10:  BREAK

10:20: Center for Technology and Civic Life’s Elections Project:  Tiana Epps-Johnson, CTCL

10:40:  Platform Speech Policies and the Elections: Daniel Kreiss and Bridget Barrett, University of North             Carolina at Chapel Hill

11:00:  Findings from the Election Integrity Project:  Alex Stamos and Renee DiResta, Stanford Internet             Observatory

11:20: BREAK

11:30:  Experiences from the Platforms

• Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook
• Clement Wolf, Global Public Policy Lead for Information Integrity at Google
• Yoel Roth, Director of Site Integrity at Twitter
• Eric Han, Head of Safety at TikTok

12:30:  Full Panel Q&A/Discussion

1PM     Close

This event is open to Stanford undergraduate students only. 

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will be accepting applications from eligible juniors on who are interested in writing their senior thesis on a subject touching upon democracy, economic development, and rule of law (DDRL) from any university department.  The application period opens on January 11, 2021 and runs through February 12, 2021.   CDDRL faculty and current honors students will be present to discuss the program and answer any questions.

For more information on the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program, please click here.

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/eGGzDeiGtIc

 

About the Event: Research on social media and politics has largely focused on two very different political contexts: authoritarian regimes and “normal” democratic polities. However, many countries’ political systems exist between these extremes: there is both “normal” online mobilization and efforts at manipulation that emanate in whole or in part from state-linked actors. In this article, we focus on a country with such a system: Pakistan. We investigate the politics of social media in the run-up to Pakistan’s 2018 general election. The campaign involved both intense, large-scale electoral mobilization and recurrent, credible allegations of influence by the country’s politically powerful army. We analyze millions of Twitter posts in English and Urdu by major political actors and their followers in Pakistan before and just after the 2018 election to identify patterns of 1) normal mobilization and 2) coordinated manipulation. Several findings emerge. First, the main political parties were highly active on social media, with the eventually-victorious Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) of Imran Khan showing a noticeable edge in online enthusiasm that matches the substantial victory of the PTI in the election. Second, there was a noticeable “dissident sphere” on Twitter, seeking to get around a campaign of censorship and media influence by the military. However, dissidents’ messages were largely swamped by the broader party competition and narratives favorable to the PTI and the military. Third, we find evidence of coordinated activities. This appears to have largely favored the PTI and pro-military messages, which saw a substantially higher rate of amplification. Finally, we see evidence of narrative alignment between the PTI and the military – the clusters of their followers seemed to advance pro-PTI and anti-PML-N messages; pro-PTI and anti-PML-N narratives were pervasive in the PML-N and dissident clusters.

 

About the Speakers: 

Asfandyar Mir is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. His research interests are in international security with current work focusing on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, drone warfare, US counterterrorism policy, South Asia security issues, misinformation dynamics, and Al-Qaida. Some of his research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, such as International Security, International Studies Quarterly, and Security Studies. My commentary has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, H-Diplo, Lawfare, and Washington Post Monkey Cage.

 

Tamar Mitts is Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and a Faculty Member at the Data Science Institute and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Her research applies machine learning and text analysis methods to study political behavior in the digital age, and has been published in the American Political Science Review, International Organization, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Political Science Research and Methods, among other outlets.

 

Paul Staniland is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident scholar in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research focuses on political violence and international security in South Asia. Staniland’s first book, Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse, was published by Cornell University Press in 2014, and his second book, Armed Politics: Violence, Order, and the State in South Asia, will be published by Cornell in 2022.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/Q6-ErAxGmQ0

 

About the Event: While research into why repression varies has thrived, essentially no effort has been made to examine stopping large-scale applications once underway. We put forward a new theoretical framework that conceptualizes repressive behavior as a rare/slow-changing process that is unlikely to terminate unless it is perturbed by a significant cost. As such, we maintain that repression is more likely ended by democratization than from diverse factors commonly espoused in the literature and policy community (e.g., military intervention, naming/shaming, international law and economic sanctions). Investigating a new database regarding 239 high-level repression spells for the period 1976-2007, we find that democratization is associated with spell-termination, while there is little systematic pacifying influence for other factors. Additionally, we find that non-violent movements for change largely drive democratization but that these movements have little direct impact on state repression themselves.

Draft Paper

 

About the Speaker: Christian Davenport is a Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Elected Fellow at the American Association for the Arts and Sciences. Primary research interests include political conflict, measurement, racism and popular culture. He is the author of seven books and author of numerous articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the Annual Review of Political Science (among others). He is the recipient of numerous grants (e.g., 12 from the National Science Foundation) and awards.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/5-om1-NWqv0

 

About the Event: Traditional international law is not sufficient for the oversight of emerging uses of the space environment, such as in situ resource utilization and increased militarization and weaponization. The US is pushing the boundaries through innovative contracting, governance instruments such as the Artemis Accords and new institutions such as the Space Force to test the space governance system. This presentation outlines a framework for organizing the system as a whole, including international agreements, national space policy and stakeholder interactions and interrelations.

 

About the Speaker: Aganaba is an assistant professor for the School for the Future in Innovation in Society with a courtesy appointment at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.

She is most known in her industry for promoting the regulation of technologies to be utilized against climate change. This has expanded to the use of satellites to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

She has received the Young Space Leaders Award from the International Astronautical Federation. She has served as the executive director of the World Space Week Association and trainee legal officer for the Nigerian Space Research and Development Agency.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/yyZ54SgGuz4

 

About the Event: We are beginning to understand that globalization has strategic consequences. Countries are using their position in globalized networks to "weaponize interdependence," through their dominance of information and financial networks. In this talk, Henry Farrell will discuss the research and policy agenda of weaponized interdependence, addressing such questions as: What areas of the global economy are most vulnerable to unilateral control of information and financial networks? How sustainable is the use of weaponized interdependence? What are the possible responses from targeted actors? And how sustainable is the open global economy if weaponized interdependence becomes a default tool for managing international relations?

Book Purchase:   https://amzn.to/3d29F4a

 

About the Speaker: Henry Farrell is SNF Agora Institute Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, and Editor in Chief of the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. His book (with Abraham Newman) Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security, was published in 2019 by Princeton University Press, and has been awarded the 2019 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize and the ISA-ICOMM Best Book Award. In addition he has authored or co-authored 34 academic articles, as well as several book chapters and numerous non-academic publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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This event is Co-Sponsored by the Center for South Asia (CSA)

How are India and the United States responding to the growing political and military power of China in the Indian Ocean region? India has traditionally sought to maintain strategic preeminence in the region and sees its influence as being increasingly contested. The United States sees the region as an integral part of the wider “Indo-Pacific,” defined by intensifying strategic competition with China. Military planners at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command are refining their strategy in the region, including their approach to mitigating security risks and deepening the U.S. Major Defense Partnership with India, alongside other allies and partners. In this off-the-record webinar, the Command’s senior policy advisor and two leading experts on the Indian Ocean will share their assessments of the key strategic challenges facing India and the United States in the region.

Speakers:

David Brewster is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Security College at the Australian National University, where he focuses on security in India and the Indian Ocean region, and Indo-Pacific maritime affairs. His books include India as an Asia Pacific Power, about India’s strategic role in the Asia Pacific, India’s Ocean: the Story of India’s Bid for Regional Leadership, which examines India’s strategic ambitions in the Indian Ocean, and the edited volume, India and China at Sea: Competition for Naval Dominance in the Indian Ocean. He is the author of several reports, including The Second Sea, which examines Australia’s role in the Indian Ocean proposes a new roadmap for Australia’s strategic engagement in that region. Brewster holds a PhD from the Australian National University.
 

Shehzi Khan is the Senior Policy Advisor in the Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate at Indo-Pacific Command, supporting senior leadership on key regional policy initiatives.  Ms. Khan served on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, as Executive Officer to the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and as senior South Asia analyst at the State Department.  Ms. Khan briefed the President of the United States in 2013.  She has been posted in Pakistan, China, and New Zealand and also lived and worked in India, Egypt, and France. Ms. Khan speaks five foreign languages and holds an MBA in International Finance and an MA in International Relations.  She is a recipient of the National Intelligence Superior Service Medal and was named State Department’s Analyst of the Year in 2014.
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Nilanthi Samaranayake directs the Strategy and Policy Analysis Program at CNA. She has led several studies on Indian Ocean and South Asia security. Recently Samaranayake has worked on U.S.-India naval cooperation, water resource competition in the Brahmaputra River basin, and Sri Lankan foreign policy. She also has conducted research on the navies of Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Maldives Coast Guard, security threats in the Bay of Bengal, and relations between smaller South Asian countries and China, India and the United States. Prior to joining CNA, Samaranayake held positions at the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Pew Research Center. Samaranayake holds an M.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in International Studies from American University.

Arzan Tarapore (Moderator) is the South Asia research scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, where he leads the newly-restarted South Asia research initiative. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. Tarapore’s research focuses on Indian military strategy and contemporary Indo-Pacific security issues. This includes a forthcoming paper on “Building Strategic Leverage in the Indian Ocean Region.” He previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, the Observer Research Foundation, and the East-West Center in Washington. Prior to his scholarly career, he served as an analyst in the Australian Defence Department. Tarapore holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London.

 

The US 2020 elections have been fraught with challenges, including the rise of "fake news” and threats of foreign intervention emerging after 2016, ongoing concerns of racially-targeted disinformation, and new threats related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital technologies will have played a more important role in the 2020 elections than ever before.

On November 4th at 10am PST, join the team at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, in collaboration with the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, for a day-after discussion of the role of digital technologies in the 2020 Elections.  Speakers will include Nathaniel Persily, faculty co-director of the Cyber Policy Center and Director of the Program on Democracy and the Internet, Marietje Schaake, the Center’s International Policy Director and International Policy Fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Alex Stamos, Director of the Cyber Center’s Internet Observatory and former Chief Security Officer at Facebook and Yahoo, Renee DiResta, Research Manager at the Internet Observatory, Andrew Grotto, Director of the Center’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and Rob Reich, Faculty Director of the Center for Ethics in Society, in conversation with Kelly Born, the Center’s Executive Director.

Please note that we will also have a YouTube livestream available for potential overflow or for anyone having issues connecting via Zoom: https://youtu.be/H2k62-JCAgE