The Hoover Institution’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions will host the conference on Social Media & Democratic Practice on March 17, 2025.
This full-day event will feature research and insightful panel discussions with leading scholars addressing the legal, ethical, and political challenges of social media's influence on public discourse and democracy. Panelists will focus on new social media platforms, the responsibilities of tech companies, and potential pathways forward for democracy in the digital age.
This event is by invitation only
| Monday, March 17, 2025 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Time/Location | Content | Speakers |
|
8:50-9:00 AM |
Opening Remarks |
Brandice Canes-Wrone, Director of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions and the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution |
|
9:00-10:30 AM |
Panel 1: Large Language Models & Politics |
Thomas Costello, Assistant Professor of Psychology, American University Charles Crabtree, Assistant Professor of Government, Dartmouth College Hannah Waight, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon Moderator: D. Sunshine Hillygus, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Duke University |
| 10:30-10:45 AM |
Break |
-- |
| 10:45 AM -12:15 PM Shultz Auditorium |
Panel 2: Social Media and Political Engagement |
Jennifer Allen, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Pennsylvania Nejla Asimovic, Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science, Georgetown University Molly Offer-Westort, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Moderator: Brendan Nyhan, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in the Department of Government, Dartmouth College |
| 12:15-1:30 PM Stauffer Auditorium |
Lunch |
-- |
| 1:30 PM-3:00 PM Shultz Auditorium |
Panel 3: New Research on New Platforms |
Eunji Kim, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Columbia University Kevin Munger, Assistant Professor, European University Institute, in Florence William Schulz, Post-Doctoral Scholar, Stanford University Moderator: Neil Malhotra, Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy, Stanford Graduate School of Business |
| 3:00-3:15 PM |
Break |
-- |
| 3:15-4:45 PM Shultz Auditorium |
Panel 4: Plenary Panel |
D. Sunshine Hillygus, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Duke University Neil Malhotra, Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy, Stanford Graduate School of Business Brendan Nyhan, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in the Department of Government, Dartmouth College Moderator: Jennifer Pan, Sir Robert Ho Tung Professor of Chinese Studies, Professor of Communication and (by courtesy) Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute |
| 5:00-5:45 PM Traitel Pavilion |
Reception |
-- |
| 6:00-8:00 PM Blount Hall |
Dinner Conversation: Social Media, Law, and Democracy |
Monika Bickert, VP for Global Policy Management, Meta Benjamin Ginsberg, Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution Eugene Volokh, Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Moderator: Nathaniel Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford Law School |
Conference Organizers:
Morris Fiorina is the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution. His research focuses primarily on representation and elections. He has written or edited fourteen books, most recently, Who Governs? Emergency Powers in the Time of Covid. Fiorina has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received two career achievement awards from organized sections of the American Political Science Association’s organized sections.
D. Sunshine Hillygus is professor of political science and public policy at Duke University and co-director of the Duke Polarization Lab. She is co-author of Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action (Cambridge University Press, 2020), The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Political Campaigns (Princeton University Press, 2008) and The Hard Count: The Social and Political Challenges of the 2000 Census (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). She is founding director of the Duke Initiative on Survey Methodology, interim director of the Social Science Research Institute, and associate PI of the American National Election Studies. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and private foundations. Professor Hillygus earned her PhD from Stanford University and a BA from the University of Arkansas.
Neil Malhotra is the Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 2020, he was part of a revolutionary industry-academic collaboration with Meta to study the effects of its platforms on American democracy. The research from this project has been published in the leading scientific journals in the world, including Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Malhotra studies the relationships among business, government, and society. In addition to publishing over 90 academic articles, he is the co-author of "Leading with Values" (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of "Frontiers in Social Innovation" (Harvard Business Review Press).
Brendan Nyhan is the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. Nyhan, a former Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former Guggenheim Fellow and Carnegie Fellow. He is co-director of Bright Line Watch, a watchdog monitoring the status of American democracy; a former contributor to The Upshot at The New York Times; co-founder of Spinsanity, a non-partisan watchdog of political spin syndicated in the Philadelphia Inquirer; and co-author of All the President's Spin, a New York Times bestseller.
Joshua A. Tucker is a Julius Silver, Roslyn S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Professor, Director of the Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia, co-Director of the Center for Social Media and Politics, Professor of Politics, affiliated Professor of Data Science and affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. He is the co-chair of the external academic team for the U.S. 2020 Facebook & Instagram Election Study and was the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Experimental Political Science. In 2024, he was included in Clarivate’s 1% Top Cited List for the top cited researchers globally by field.
