September 2026 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Invitation: Hertie School Digital Governance Research Colloquium, Fall 2026
by Daniela Alves Lima Da Silva 03 Sep '26

03 Sep '26

Dear colleagues, The Centre for Digital Governance at the Hertie School is pleased to invite you to the Fall Digital Governance Research Colloquium, an online forum for open and critical dialogue on digital governance, digital government, and artificial intelligence. This semester's colloquium brings together leading scholars to discuss a wide range of timely topics, including corporate power and digital capitalism, government automation, US AI policy, technopolitics and smart cities, and political expression on AI chatbots. Upcoming sessions include: • Dr Maha Rafi Atal (University of Glasgow) on When Companies Rule: Corporate Power from the East India Company to Silicon Valley • Elsa Estevez, PhD (National University of the South) on Government Automation for Context-Specific Public Service Delivery • Prof. Justin B. Bullock (Americans for Responsible Innovation) on US AI Policy (and its discontents) • Dr Stephanie Diepeveen (King's College London) on Technopolitics from Below: AI, Huawei, and the Smart City in Kenya • Prof. Genia Kostka (Freie Universität Berlin) on Political Expression in Private Settings: Evidence from a Survey Experiment on AI Chatbots You can find further details and register for individual sessions here: https://www.hertie-school.org/en/digital-governance/colloquium We look forward to welcoming you to the Fall Colloquium. Centre for Digital Governance | Hertie School Daniela Lima da Silva (she/her) Associate Communications ∙ Centre for Digital Governance Hertie School The University of Governance in Berlin Alexanderstr. 3 10178 Berlin ∙ Germany D.LimaDaSilva(a)hertie-school.org<mailto:D.LimaDaSilva@hertie-school.org> 📸 LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/school/centre-for-digital-governance/> | Instagram<https://www.instagram.com/hertiedigitalgov/> | YouTube<https://www.youtube.com/@digitalgovernance.berlin> 🌐 Website<https://www.hertie-school.org/en/centre-for-digital-governance>

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Sept. 16 at 2pm ET! "Governing AI: Policy, Power, and Accountability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
by Ogden, Claire 02 Sep '26

02 Sep '26

Hello all, Please join us on Zoom two weeks from today for a webinar with Northeastern University's Center for Transformative Media<https://camd.northeastern.edu/center-for-transformative-media/>, "Governing AI: Policy, Power, and Accountability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence." Panelists include Sharon Strover<https://journalism.utexas.edu/faculty/sharon-strover> (UT Austin), Kenzo Soares Seto<https://law.yale.edu/kenzo-soares> (Yale), Meredith McFadden<https://ai.northeastern.edu/our-people/meredith-mcfadden> (Northeastern), and Elettra Bietti (Northeastern). More details are below my signature. Register here<https://northeastern.zoom.us/meeting/register/cBv5Y8BpQ3SCDhV_39aVZA#/regis…>! Cheers, Claire Ogden Communications & Administrative Specialist Center for Transformative Media Northeastern University ~ Governing AI: Policy, Power, and Accountability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Date: Wednesday, Sept. 16 Time: 2:00pm Eastern Moderator: John Wihbey<https://camd.northeastern.edu/people/john-p-wihbey/> Panelists: Sharon Strover<https://journalism.utexas.edu/faculty/sharon-strover> (UT Austin), Meredith McFadden<https://ai.northeastern.edu/our-people/meredith-mcfadden> (Northeastern), Kenzo Soares Seto<https://law.yale.edu/kenzo-soares> (Yale), Elettra Bietti<https://law.northeastern.edu/faculty/bietti/> (Northeastern) Artificial intelligence is no longer an emerging technology — it is already embedded in hiring, healthcare, public infrastructure, and democratic processes, yet the institutions meant to govern it remain incomplete and unevenly distributed across global contexts. This webinar treats AI governance as a political and cultural question rather than a technical one: who sets the rules, whose values are encoded in them, and what accountability is possible when systems operate across borders and communities. Drawing on applied ethics, media and communication studies, and labor-centered approaches to AI policy, the conversation traces how regulation is shaped from above, through legislation, industry self-governance, and international bodies, and contested from below, through worker organizing, civil society advocacy, and grassroots demands for digital sovereignty. Moderated by John Wihbey, the session brings researchers into dialogue with each other and the audience around the tensions, possibilities, and stakes of governing AI as a medium of social and political life.

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Online Convening: LLMs are the Third Wave of Automated Content Moderation
by Engler, Alex C. 02 Sep '26

02 Sep '26

Hello AoIR colleagues (with apologies for cross-posting), I’m writing to invite you to Penn MEDIATED’s online convening, LLMs are the Third Wave of Automated Content Moderation. The convening will be held via Zoom on September 10 from 11-12:30 EST and you can register at this link<https://upenn.zoom.us/meeting/register/CbOYuDe0TvSpcmoY--eKPg#/registration>. You can see the overview, agenda, and speaker lineup below—it has researchers (including own affiliated faculty Yphtach Lelkes and Danaé Metaxa) and technologists who will examine how LLMs are changing online platform’s content moderation, how they compare to prior automated systems, and what the emerging research in this space tells us. We’ll also hear from practitioners building a new ecosystem of custom LLM-based moderation systems. LLMs are the Third Wave of Automated Content Moderation Content moderation is critical to protecting users against harmful and illegal online content, although it may also restrict free expression. Over the past two decades, platforms have increasingly turned to automation to perform content moderation at scale. First through hashing algorithms and later through predictive machine learning methods, many large platforms have automated over 90% of content moderation actions. Today, online platforms are increasingly exploring using large language models (LLMs), as a new component of the content moderation technology stack. With online platforms conducting mass layoffs of trust and safety teams, while also increasing investments in their AI development, this convening will explore how LLMs fit in the content moderation landscape and what that means for platforms, policymakers, and users. This convening brings together researchers, technologists, and practitioners to examine what this third wave of automated content moderation means in practice. We will explore how LLMs are being deployed by platforms today, how they compare to prior automated systems, and what the emerging research in this space tells us. We will hear from experts who are building their own custom systems using LLMs for content moderation and researchers who study their implications for information integrity. The conversation will also examine the policy environment shaping adoption: regulatory frameworks in the EU, Brazil and India, are setting new expectations for the speed and transparency of content moderation decisions, incentivizing further automation by online platforms. We will share a pre-read working paper on this topic in advance of this event. [Register at this link<https://upenn.zoom.us/meeting/register/CbOYuDe0TvSpcmoY--eKPg#/registration>] Agenda Alex Engler - Welcome and Introduction Alice Hunsberger - A trust and safety professional’s view Brief Presentations * Dave Willner & Samidh Chakrabarti - A demo of Zentropi’s content classification tool and how it is different from other LLM-based content moderation approaches * Camille François & Juliet Shen - Overview of open-source tooling for LLM-based content moderation and the importance of cross sectoral collaboration in this space * Audience Q&A Research Presentations * Professor Yphtach Lelkes and Neil Fasching share findings from their recent paper: Model-Dependent Moderation: Inconsistencies in Hate Speech Detection Across LLM-based Systems<https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-acl.1144/> * Professors Danaé Metaxa and Sorelle Friedler discuss their recent work: Identity-related Speech Suppression in Generative AI Content Moderation<https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13725> * Audience Q&A Discussion and Open Questions * Societal implications of LLMs in content moderation (Firestarter: Dia Kayyali * Policy developments are shaping LLM content moderation (Firestarter: Prithvi Iyer) Closing Remarks Speakers * Alice Hunsberger, Head of Trust and Safety, Musubi * Dave Willner, Co-Founder, Zentropi * Samidh Chakrabarti, Co-Founder, Zentropi * Camille François, President, ROOST * Juliet Shen, Head of Partnerships, ROOST * Yphtach Lelkes, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communications, UPenn * Neil Fasching, Postdoctoral Researcher, UPenn * Danaé Metaxa, Raj and Neera Singh Term Assistant Professor of Computer & Information Science, UPenn * Sorelle Friedler, Shibulal Family Professor of Computer Science, Haverford College Alex C. Engler Executive Director, Penn MEDIATED Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy<https://infodem.upenn.edu/> The University of Pennsylvania Amy Gutmann Hall #506 acengler(a)upenn.edu ** Want to understand what ails our information ecosystem? ** ** Get our Newsletter<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://signup.e2ma.net/signup/2017639/1984707/…> | Follow us on BlueSky<https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xkug7clrldzrj7rktb2jewsk> or LinkedIn<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.linkedin.com/company/penn-center-on…> **

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XSifter - Open for Academic X Research and Teaching
by Stuart Shulman 02 Sep '26

02 Sep '26

Limited but reliable and legal academic access to X data from the previous 30 days is available via XSifter. For now, the USD pricing model is: - $100 to license the first 5,000 posts and take a free training session. - $15/1,000 to license additional posts for academics or non-profits. - $25/1,000 to license additional posts for commercial users. - 5% discount if you license 100,000 posts or 10% if you license 500,000. - For now, there is a relatively low monthly quota for the XSifter application as a whole. - Query testing and refinement currently requires a free full serve meeting. - The X data is stored and analyzed in DiscoverText, where you can collaborate with unlimited peers for free. - The phrase "replicate, replicate, replicate" was popularized by political scientists Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba (often abbreviated as KKV). It emphasizes that scientific transparency, open data, and the ability to reproduce research findings are the ultimate safeguards of scientific validity in social science. Per the KKV maxim "replicate, replicate, replicate," this is an X-compliant replication platform. Other academics can replicate your study without need to "rehydrate" and datasets can be used in the classroom for teaching a variety of methods. Deleted, suspended, and protected posts are not displayed. - While data downloads are not permitted, graphml files for network visualization can be generated. - There are some interesting new metadata fields supplied by X, such as public metrics bookmark count and public metrics impression count. - We append certain hybrid metadata fields for filtering. One is the number of followers per day a user has acquired over the life of the account. Filtering for accounts that acquire 100+ followers a day always unearths something interesting about X affordances. - Self-serve access with free microsampling and AI-assisted query refinement is 2-3 weeks away. - The most recent experiment (keyword: data centers) yielded just under 17,000 posts (excluding retweets) from the last 14 days. This dataset and others from the beta testing are available to anyone who books a meeting to learn about the tools. Book a full serve query testing meeting here: https://calendly.com/discovertext Dr. Stuart W. Shulman Founder and CEO, Texifter Editor Emeritus, *Journal of Information Technology & Politics*

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New book: The Danmei Culture in Chinese Media and Society (Authored by Tingting Hu and Liang Ge)
by Liang Ge 01 Sep '26

01 Sep '26

Dear colleagues and friends, I’m very pleased to share the publication of a new book that Tingting Hu and I have co-authored, **The Danmei Culture in Chinese Media and Society: Male-Male Romance, Resistance and Representation<https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003705741>**, published by Routledge as part of its Transmedia series. The book grows out of our long-standing research on Chinese danmei (boys love) culture and asks what this cultural formation can tell us about gender, sexuality, media industries, fandom, and cultural governance in contemporary China and East Asia. Rather than approaching danmei simply as a literary genre or asking whether it should be understood as inherently feminist, queer, misogynistic, or homophobic, we treat it as a historically evolving and internally contradictory cultural ecology. We trace its development from the late 1990s onwards, from online fiction and reader communities to web dramas, audio dramas, manga and animation. Across these different media forms, we are particularly interested in the uneven relations among women’s and queer desires, commercial adaptation, platform capitalism, fandom practices, and state regulation. One of the book’s central arguments is that danmei can be understood as 'a vital yet ambivalent counterpublic': a cultural space capable of unsettling dominant heteronormative and gendered scripts, while remaining vulnerable to commercial incorporation, ideological neutralisation, and its own exclusions and contradictions. We also develop the idea of a 'fractured transmedia system' to describe what happens when queer narratives move across media under conditions of censorship: official adaptations frequently erase or displace queer intimacy, while fans undertake forms of narrative and affective repair across platforms. Empirically, the book draws on several years of immersive digital ethnography, alongside survey research and extensive interviews with readers, fans and cultural producers. We write throughout from the position of aca-fans, taking seriously both the analytical possibilities and reflexive complications of studying a cultural world in which we have ourselves participated. Although the book is grounded in the Chinese context, we hope it will speak more broadly to conversations in media and cultural sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer studies, fan studies, digital culture, and East Asian popular culture—especially debates about how intimate and political possibilities are made, constrained, commodified and repaired through popular media. If this intersects with your teaching or research, we would be delighted if you had a look, and of course very happy to continue the conversation. Warmest wishes, Liang - Dr Liang Ge (they/them), PhD, FHEA Lecturer in Sociology 2.068, Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester, M13 9PL Chair, Transcultural Digital Intimacies Network (TransDI)<https://bsky.app/profile/transdi.bsky.social> Honorary Research Fellow, Social Research Institute, University College London Executive Member, Race Equality Network (REN) Email: liang.ge(a)manchester.ac.uk<mailto:liang.ge@manchester.ac.uk> Tel: +44 0161 306 2816 Web: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/liang-ge Blog: https://www.liangge.blog Book Student Hours with me<https://outlook.office.com/bookwithme/user/fd73a2555d074f23a8f775bba8380232…> Liang Ge - Google Scholar<https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&pli=1&user=wq4A_RUAAAAJ> My working hours might not be yours – please don’t feel obliged to respond outside your usual working time. Plz Check My New Publications here: New Book! Ge, L. (2027). Ambivalent Desires: Affect and Boys Love in China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://press.umich.edu/Books/A/Ambivalent-Desires3 Hu, T. and Ge, L. (2026) The Danmei Culture in Chinese Media and Society: Male-Male Romance, Resistance and Representation. London: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003705741. New Article! Ge, L. (2026) Sympoietic creativity and the boundaries of qing: digital romance writers negotiating generative AI. AI & Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-026-03253-w Ge, L. (2026). “In the Name of Pro-Women”: Intra-Women Surveillance and Internalized Misogyny in Digital East Asia. Media and Communication, 14, 12136. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.12136 Ge, L. (2025). Spectral imaginings and sympoietic creativity: AI hallucinations and the ethics of posthuman creativity. Big Data & Society, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251400696. Ge, L. (2026). Ambivalent desiring subjects: young women, agency and post-(socialist-)feminist sensibilities in China. Feminist Theory, 27(3): 369–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001251334949 Ge, L., Hu, T., & Ouyang, M. (2026). Digital literacies of intimacy: women’s engagement and learning in otome video games. Information, Communication & Society, 29(10): 2924–2946. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2587132 Ge, L., & Hu, T. (2025). Gamifying intimacy: AI-driven affective engagement and human-virtual human relationships. Media, Culture & Society, 47(6): 1265-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437251337239

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Growing Up Digital: Young People & Technology Workshop (September 16, London)
by Liam McLoughlin 01 Sep '26

01 Sep '26

Dear Friends, The Technology, Internet, and Policy Group (TIP) [https://psatip.uk] and the Media and Politics Group at the Political Studies Association invite you to participate at our latest workshop titled ‘Growing Up Digital: Young People & Technology’. It’s a pivotal moment for in the regulation of young people's technology use, with social media bans already implemented, and recent consultations in the United Kingdom on what actions the government should take to protect young people online. In a direct response to this, we are hosting a workshop develop a shared understanding of the current evidence base and to build the cross-sector relationships and to bring experts together to build the cross-sector relationships is something which is deeply needed. Growing Up Digital: Young People & Technology Workshop When: 16 September @ 9:30 am - 5:00 pm Where: Coram’s Lecture Hall (41 Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1AZ) Who: (you) The day will include: -Keynote debate designed to provide a shared diagnosis on how young people use social media platforms, the benefits and issues with this use, and to outline what evidence currently exists. - Policy Tables - a structured speed networking activity based around “policy problem” tables including, age assurance in practice, scope of social media, keeping children safe, and the negative consequences of a ban. - Emerging research and future directions - Issuing a call for papers on two themes (below), the workshop will curate two panels of speakers presenting cutting edge interdisciplinary research on topics of interest to current policy development. For further information and to sign up, please visit the link here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/technologyinternetpolicygrouptip/2358820 If you’re unable to make the event, please feel free to share colleagues and peers who might benefit in attending. Lunch and drinks will be provided on the day. We also have a small budget to help early career researchers with the cost of travel to London, so please don't let that be a barrier — just let us know. Please feel free to email us at tip(a)psa.ac.uk with any questions. Best wishes, Liam Dr Liam McLoughlin Senior Lecturer in Politics Department of History, Geography, & Social Sciences Edge Hill University mailto:Liam.McLoughlin@EdgeHill.ac.uk BSky: https://bsky.app/profile/leelum.bsky.social https://research.edgehill.ac.uk/en/persons/liam-mcloughlin Office S16, Main Building Technology, Internet, & Policy (TIP) Specialist Group Convenor Website: https://www.psa.ac.uk/specialist-groups/technology-internet-and-policy-tip ________________________________ Edge Hill University<http://ehu.ac.uk/home/emailfooter> Modern University of the Year, The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022<http://ehu.ac.uk/tef/emailfooter> University of the Year, Educate North 2021/21 ________________________________ This message is private and confidential. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and remove it from your system. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Edge Hill or associated companies. Edge Hill University may monitor email traffic data and also the content of email for the purposes of security and business communications during staff absence.<http://ehu.ac.uk/itspolicies/emailfooter>

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Second Call for Papers: ‘Age-appropriate design of online platforms: questions for EU law and children’s rights’
by Eskens, S.J. (Sarah) 01 Sep '26

01 Sep '26

** Second Call for Papers: ‘Age-appropriate design of online platforms: questions for EU law and children’s rights’ ** -- Sharing this for a second time now that the academic year has started -- Governments and parents throughout Europe are demanding that minors are better protected when they go online. So far, much of the debate has concentrated on social media age limits. France has adopted statutory social media age restrictions. Similar efforts are being made in other European countries. There is also increasing political pressure on the EU to take action. In response to that, the European Commission established a panel of experts to advise on child safety online. After the co-chairs of the panel presented their final report in July 2026, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed her support for ‘phased and gradual access for different age ranges’. When it comes to protecting minors online, social media age limits are just one possible solution to a complex and broad problem. First, the problem is broader than social media, as online games and AI chatbots present similar risks to social media, including exposure to harmful content, manipulation, grooming, and problematic or addicted use. Second, social media age limits presume there is a single ‘right’ age to start using these services, whereas a children’s rights perspective requires age-appropriate design of online services that respects children’s evolving capacities. The final report of the co-chairs of the special panel acknowledges these issues. It speaks of ‘social media+’ instead of just social media and calls for ‘age-appropriate regulation’ of such services, which signals the policy debate may be moving beyond simple age limits. Age-appropriate design of online services raises many questions on the intersection of children’s rights and EU law. For instance, what is the role of EU platform regulation and data protection law in ensuring age-appropriate design of social media, online games, and AI chatbots? Furthermore, how do different solutions to ensure age-appropriate design relate to children’s human rights? For example, if countries implement statutory age limits of 16 years for social media, then is the interference this poses with children’s right to freedom of expression justified in light of its aim? Another question is to what extent the EU has competence to legislate EU-wide design or access requirements for online services used by minors. At the same time, it can be asked how social media age limits and other solutions at the national-legal level relate to the Digital Services Act’s fully harmonised regime. It is also an open question which services should be addressed in protecting children online, and how the targeted services should be defined. The fast developments around social media age limits and the protection of minors online necessitate critical reflection from different legal perspectives. It is crucial that the discussion does not narrow itself to statutory age limits as the only solution available to EU and national lawmakers, and that the interaction between children’s rights and EU law is sufficiently considered. Therefore, we are organising a workshop to bring together scholars working on the protection of minors online, from the perspective of either children’s rights or EU law. The goal of the workshop is to bring together these different perspectives and explore how children’s rights should inform the implementation of existing EU laws (platform regulation, data protection, media regulation) and possible new legal solutions, including social media age limits. ** Submissions ** Are you interested in presenting your work during this workshop? Please submit an abstract of a maximum of 750 words to s.j.eskens(a)vu.nl<mailto:s.j.eskens@vu.nl> with the subject line ‘Workshop age-appropriate design of online platforms’. Please also include a short biography of up to 150 words in your submission. We specifically welcome work in progress so that authors can benefit from the wide range of views we aim to bring together. We also encourage early-career scholars, including doctoral candidates, to submit an abstract. The deadline for submitting abstracts is 16 October 2026. We aim to conclude the selection process mid-November. ** Workshop format ** Accepted contributors will each give a presentation of approximately 15 to 20 minutes, followed by discussion. This is a discussion-oriented workshop, and we ask participants to attend for the full day so that everyone can engage with each other’s work. ** Financial support ** This workshop is funded by the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research. There will be a limited amount of financial support available to cover accommodation and travel for those with limited institutional resources. Should you require funding to enable your participation to the workshop, please indicate this when submitting your abstract via email. ** Date and location ** The workshop takes place in person at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, which is located at De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam. The date for the workshop is Friday, 19 February 2027. Attending the workshop is free of charge. ** Contact ** For any questions about the workshop or the submission process, please contact Sarah Eskens at s.j.eskens(a)vu.nl<mailto:s.j.eskens@vu.nl>. ** Convenors ** Sarah Eskens, Assistant Professor in Law and Technology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Simone van der Hof, Full Professor of Law and Digital Technology, Leiden University

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