Laura Kurek

Keeping information reliable in the digital age: Lessons from Wikipedia A new series explores how Wikipedia can inspire new standards of knowledge integrity for our times

A gentle reminder that Wikipedia is a global treasure and that if you dislike what you see on there the door is open to you to contribute to the community.
Radical transparency and cooperation is how Wikipedia works:
medium.com/freely-shari...

Does your work explore mis/disinformation, scams, hate speech, or other forms of harmful information online?

We are convening a CSCW workshop to bring together a global community focused on information disorder. We welcome short submissions, due August 8th.

cscw2025infodisorder.netlify.app

-- Deadline extended to August 8th! --

Does your work explore mis/disinformation, scams, hate speech, or other forms of harmful information online?

We are convening a CSCW workshop to bring together a global community focused on information disorder. We welcome 2-6 page submissions, due August 1.

cscw2025infodisorder.netlify.app

NLP 4 Democracy - COLM 2025

📣 Super excited to organize the first workshop on ✨NLP for Democracy✨ at COLM @colmweb.org!!

Check out our website: sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.e...

Call for submissions (extended abstracts) due June 19, 11:59pm AoE

#COLM2025 #LLMs #NLP #NLProc #ComputationalSocialScience

AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality Generative AI spammers are brute forcing the internet, and it is working.

My latest: Generative AI is enabling a brute force attack against the algorithms that control reality. AI slop is taking over every algorithmically controlled social media platform and search platform, and the tech platforms are helping:

www.404media.co/ai-slop-is-a...

With New Executive Order, President Trump Claims Unprecedented, Unconstitutional Power Over Independent Agencies (WASHINGTON) — Late yesterday, President Trump released a fact sheet on “rein[ing] in independent agencies” and an executive order claiming complete control over nearly all federal independent agencie...

President Trump’s new EO claiming complete control over all federal independent agencies undermines over a century of law & the U.S. Constitution. This move subverts the very purpose of independent agencies, which is to operate as experts on specific topics w/o being subject to politics.

Having been the focus of false allegations used to motivate some of this "censorship" narrative, I'll say this: My colleagues & I will continue to use our free speech to study and report on how social media platforms facilitate the spread of falsehoods & are manipulated for political/financial gain.

A great breakdown of how Whatsapp + Signal work and why the latter is the way to go for privacy

Analysis | State Dept. disinfo unit faces shutdown amid GOP’s war on censorship The Global Engagement Center said in a legal filing that Congress probably won’t reauthorize it.

A State Department unit aimed at tracking foreign disinfo campaigns and terrorist groups faces shutdown in two weeks amid largely unsubstantiated GOP accusations that it has played a role in censoring conservative views. My newsletter today:
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

La fameuse fenêtre d’Overton

I’m super excited to announce I'm part of an amazing team (<3 @williambrady.bsky.social @killianmcloughlin.bsky.social @mjcrockett.bsky.social) that just published a paper in @science.org on the role of outrage in spread of misinformation

Link here:
science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Summary in🧵🔽
1/

10/10 recommend an internship with @cendemtech.bsky.social. Incredibly smart and caring people trying to make tech better

Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Claude: I’m not able to provide accurate, real time information on cups. Please visit your local cup authority for up-to-date, nonpartisan guidance.

The Great Bluesky Migration: I Answer (Some) Of Your Questions For the last year and a half, us Bluesky users have frequently reminded one another that we are merely posters on a niche microblogging website. It's intended as a warning about hubris. A protective ...

Wondering how to use Bluesky feeds, blocklists, and filters? Are you worried that Bluesky will inevitably turn evil? Are you wondering what the Alf thing is about, but are too afraid to ask?

I try to answer your questions here:

little-flying-robots.ghost.io/the-great-bl...

Doctor of Philosophy in Information Studies (PhD) - College of Information (INFO) This doctoral program prepares students to address the hardest social and technical problems of today and tomorrow.

📣 I am recruiting 1-2 PhD students for Fall 2025 at the University of Maryland College of Information.
Consider applying if you're interested in language, society/politics, and computers!

Deadline Dec 3: ischool.umd.edu/academics/ph...

And pls share with anyone who may be interested!

A graphic with a purple background that is an image of a grey sphere landing in a net. Beneath this is a chartreuse bar with black lettering: Five Theses on the Gravity of Platforms

Last year at the Institute for Advanced Study, I had the great pleasure of convening an amazing group of multidisciplinary scholars on the topic of the platform in society. One of our collective efforts was "5 Theses on the Gravity of Platforms" www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/fiv...

Our piece focus in perceptions of humanness of social media content. We use pair-wise models to compare platform and AI-generated content. We find:

- humans can in general separate real platform from AI content

- human rely on emotional cues to identify AI vs Human content

Hand-drawn mural of meeting topics.

Hand-drawn mural of meeting topics.

Last week, we organized a CCC/CRA visioning workshop on "The Future of Research on Social Technologies." It was all discussion, no panels.

CRA paid for a graphic recorder too, (!) who drew meeting topics and highlights in real time on giant pieces of paper, and now I want one all the time.