Ethan Zuckerman
Associate Professor of Public Policy, Communication and Information University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Amherst MA
Ethan Zuckerman's work focuses on building alternatives to the commercial internet.
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Expertise
Biography
Social Media
Video
Education
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Work towards MFA
Electronic Arts
Williams College
B.A.
Philosophy
Select Recent Media Coverage
The hidden world beneath the shadows of YouTube's algorithm
BBC
2025-04-23
Ethan Zuckerman explains how he and a team of scientists devised a way to compile metrics about YouTube that it hasn’t been willing to disclose, such as how many videos have been uploaded to the platform.
Move over, Bluesky: Front Porch Forum is Vermont’s most popular social network
The Boston Globe
2024-12-05
Ethan Zuckerman comments in an article about Front Porch Forum, Vermont’s most popular social media network. Under the platform’s strict terms of use, only community members, using their real names, may post.“It is proof that you can build other forms of social interaction — and it’s a good reminder that we probably need that,” Zuckerman says.
Speaking Freely: Ethan Zuckerman
Electronic Frontier Foundation online
2024-05-21
Ethan Zuckerman is interviewed about free speech and expression. “I think freedom of expression is this idea that we want to hear what people think and feel and believe, and we want them to say those things as freely as possible,” he says. “But we also recognize at the same time that what one person says has a real effect on what other people are able to say or feel comfortable saying.”
Lawsuit against Meta asks if Facebook users have right to control their feeds using external tools
AP online
2024-05-05
Ethan Zuckerman is interviewed about a federal lawsuit against Meta filed on his behalf by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, over an internet browser extension he has developed that would allow Facebook users to unfollow all of the content fed to them by the platform’s algorithm.
AI in Education: A Professor's Guide to Teaching in the Age of ChatGPT
Cryptopolitan online
2023-12-06
An article focusing on UMass Amherst professor Ethan Zuckerman addresses how higher education faculty are dealing with the advent of AI, like ChatGPT.
Threads Is Rolling Out on the Web. That Just Might Save It
WIRED online
2023-08-24
Ethan Zuckerman comments on the rollout of the web version of Threads, the text-based social media platform marketed as an alternative to X, formerly known as Twitter. “I joined Threads within 48 hours of it opening up, like everybody else, but I haven’t really used it, and the reason is that I access most of my social media on my laptop,” Zuckerman says, adding that mobile-only platforms are more difficult for scholars to research.
After a Year of Focus on Big Tech's Harms, Why We're Still Waiting on Reform
TIME online
2022-09-14
Instead, the biggest changes since last year may be in the minds of consumers, who now are more skeptical than ever of Big Tech. “We’ve had what people are now calling a ‘techlash’ against this idea that social media is always a good thing and is part of the world getting better and better,” says Ethan Zuckerman
A Frustrating Hassle Holding Electric Cars Back: Broken Chargers
The New York Times online
2022-08-16
“Often, those fast chargers have real maintenance issues,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has owned a Chevrolet Bolt for several years. “When they do, you very quickly find yourself in pretty dire straits.” In the winter of 2020, Mr. Zuckerman was commuting about 150 miles each way to a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The cold winter weather can reduce the driving range of electric cars, and Mr. Zuckerman found himself needing a charge on the way home.
Is Twitter toppling? Can Threads sew salvation?
Connecticut Public Radio radio
2023-07-10
Ethan Zuckerman joins a podcast discussion on the rise of the new social media app Threads and its position as a competitor to Twitter.
Ruling could dampen government efforts to rein in Big Tech
AP News online
2022-07-03
Ethan Zuckerman comments in an article about how a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on climate change could dampen efforts to reign in the tech industry.
Reimaging the Future of Digital Public Spaces
KQED radio
2022-05-25
Ethan Zuckerman is a panelist on a nationally syndicated radio show discussing a reimagined future for digital public spaces.
It’s the Billionaires’ Internet, and We’re Just Posting on It
Vice online
2022-04-26
Ethan Zuckerman is quoted in several articles about Elon Musk’s preliminary agreement to purchase Twitter are quoted in several articles.
Telegram Thrives Amid Russia’s Media Crackdown
The Wall Street Journal print
2022-03-18
Ethan Zuckerman comments about the rise of social media platform Telegram as a result of Russia’s media crackdown following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
How Addictive Social Media Algorithms Could Finally Face a Reckoning in 2022
TIME Magazine
2022-01-04
Ethan Zuckerman comments in an article asking if addictive social media algorithms could face a reckoning in 2022.
Twitch Isn't Overwhelmed With Far-Right Extremists, But It Does Have A Big Misinformation Problem
Kotaku online
2021-05-31
Ethan Zuckerman comments about how Twitch has now joined older social media platforms in beginning to combat misinformation.
Misinformation Is Destroying Our Country. Can Anything Rein It In?
The Nation print
2021-05-10
Zuckerman comments about possible ways to rein in online misinformation. He says, “The Nazis right now have an incentive to build alternative distributed media, and the rest of us are behind because we don’t have the incentive to do it. My real deep fear is that we end up ceding the design of this way of building social networks to far-right extremists, because they are the ones who need these new spaces to discuss and organize."
To Thrive, Our Democracy Needs Digital Public Infrastructure
Politico online
2021-01-05
"This is why a growing group of scholars and technologists have started looking at new ways of supporting flourishing online public life by focusing on parks and libraries for the internet — what scholar Ethan Zuckerman calls “digital public infrastructure.”
Fragmented and humbled: How social media could emerge from the post-election crisis
The Boston Globe print
2021-01-24
"The events of the past few weeks “could be an ugly path that might get us toward a very different media environment,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has been working on ways to better orient social media toward civic conversation and public benefit."
Select Publications
Musk isn’t disrupting the government. He’s breaking it
ProspectEthan Zuckerman
2025-02-24
Ethan Zuckerman writes that Elon Musk’s strategy to “move fast and break things” is not what voters wanted. “It’s one thing to move fast and break the business world and an entirely different thing to move fast and break government. Musk is breaking systems that voters, through their representatives, chose to pay for with tax dollars. Breaking these systems means breaking the democratic processes that led to their creation in the first place,” Zuckerman writes.
I Love Facebook. That’s Why I’m Suing Meta.
The New York TimesEthan Zuckerman
2024-05-05
Ethan Zuckerman writes that despite liking Facebook, he is suing the platform’s parent company, Meta, in an effort to ensure that users have more control over what appears on their feeds.
We still live in Steve Jobs’s brave new world
ProspectEthan Zuckerman
2024-02-20
"Forty years ago, Apple unveiled the Macintosh—and computing changed forever ..."
Let the community work it out: Throwback to early internet days could fix social media’s crisis of legitimacy
The ConversationEthan Zuckerman and Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci
2023-10-24
Ethan Zuckerman and Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci argue that a return to the early days of the internet where the community, rather than social media companies, oversaw online content, could solve social media’s current “crisis of legitimacy.” They write, “Why should a few companies – or a few billionaire owners – have the power to decide everything about online spaces that billions of people use? This unaccountable model of governance has led stakeholders of all stripes to criticize platforms’ decisions as arbitrary, corrupt or irresponsible.”
What happens when AI trains itself?
ProspectEthan Zuckerman
2023-09-06
"Artificial intelligence will soon run out of human sentences to learn from. What are its options then? "
War as a mediated catastrophe
ProspectEthan Zuckerman
2022-04-07
Ethan Zuckerman examines the media dynamics of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the marked differences in how Putin and Zelensky use media and social media to frame their own narratives.
Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them (Book)
W. W. Norton & CompanyEthan Zuckerman
2021-01-19
Zuckerman says: "How can you change society if you lose faith in institutions like governments and corporations? Mistrust: How Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them (2021) looks at democracies like the US through the lens of mistrust in institutions, a massive social trend."
