Recent Posts
Disinfo and Elections in the Global Majority
I’m just back from a very quick trip to Rio de Janiero to take part in a conference put togeth…
Kai-Cheng Yang: The Social Bots are Coming…
Kai-Cheng Yang is the creator of Botometer, which was – until 2023 – the state of the ar…
Heather Ford: Is the Web Eating Itself? LLMs versus verifiability
One of my favorite things in academia is that you can go a decade without seeing a friend and remain…
What I Did On My Summer Vacation: 2023
It’s chilly here in western MA and there’s a hint of red starting to show in the leaves.…
Lightning Talks at CU Boulder Local Tech Economies
Much of the Local Tech Ecology conference is a series of lightning talks at the Local Tech Ecologies…
Ethan Zuckerman
Hi. I’m Ethan Zuckerman. I’m a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where I teach Public Policy, Communication and Information. I’m starting a new research center called the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure. Over the years, I’ve been a tech startup guy (with Tripod.com), a non-profit founder (Geekcorps.org) and co-founder (Globalvoices.org), and throughout it all, a blogger.
I started blogging here in 2003 when this site was titled “My Heart’s in Accra”. I now write in a lot of different fora – for The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review and other sites, on my Medium page and as part of different university projects. Blogging led me to writing books as well as academic and journalistic articles, and much of that work features here.
Books
Mistrust
How can you change society if you lose faith in institutions like governments and corporations? Mistrust (2021) is a guidebook to social change through movements that try to change minds and hearts as well as laws.
Rewire
Is the Internet bringing us closer together? Or just insulating us in our echo chambers? Rewire (2013) explores ways to break those echo chambers and build a more connected world.
Projects
iDPI
Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure – a new research center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, exploring future visions of the internet that center civic life and the public good.
Gobo
A social media aggregator that gives you control over what and who you hear the most from.
Media Cloud
A free, open source tool for tracking ideas, individuals and stories across the open web.
Global Voices
An online community of writers, artists and translators who work together to bring a richer, more nuanced picture of life around the world, with contributors in over 150 countries.
Articles
“The Internet’s Original Sin” is an article I wrote for the Atlantic about the toxic nature of the ad supported internet… and my confession of unleashing the popup ad on the world.
“The Case for Digital Public Infrastructure” offers a vision of how we might build an internet on values of civic engagement rather than private profit.
“Cute Cats to the Rescue?” is an oldie but goodie – my attempt to explain the Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism and censorship resistance in academic form.
Tweets & Podcasts
Podcast: Reimagining the Internet
My Tweets
Public Speaking
My Talks
I enjoy public speaking as a way to develop new ideas, meet new people and see different parts of the world. My TED talk, seen below, is a good introduction both to my public speaking and the ideas in my books.
I don’t use an agent for speaking – if you want to invite me to speak at your event, conference or bar mitzvah, contact me through my contact form.