Samuel Woolley

Sam is a PhD student in Communication at the University of Washington. His current research examines the intersection of communication technology, politics, and culture. Specifically, he is interested in the ways that social media bots—combinations of code that produce content and mimic real users—are used by powerful political actors worldwide for coercion and control. Sam’s long-term research endeavor, the Project on Computational Propaganda, is focused on the ethnographic study of the makers and users of bot technology. Broad questions of interest for Sam include: To date, what impact have innovations in auto-generated scripts on global social media services had on political discussions and current affairs? Is there a demonstrable impact of bots on news consumption? What is the evolutionary trajectory of this field of computer science, and what are the mechanisms for improving public literacy, generating careful policy oversight, and preventing the abuse of social networking technologies?

Sam has a BA from the University of San Diego and an MA from CGU in the Claremont University Consortium. He tweets from @samuelwoolley and helps manage the blog cccerethinkingprosperity.wordpress.com.