In the News
New York Times
Ideas from the Pax Technica used in this review essay by Roger Cohen in the New York Times: One stab at defining such an invisible force that I find persuasive has been offered by Philip Howard, a professor of Internet Studies at...
Podcast: Talking Politics
John Naughton talks to Philip Howard of the Oxford Internet Institute about whether the digital revolution has been good or bad for democracy. Will the Internet of Things usher in an era of universal peace or universal surveillance? What happened to the hopes of tech...
A $1 Million Fight Against Hillary Clinton’s Online Trolls
Helped with a story on the Atlantic about Hillary Clinton's response to online trolling. “A lot of digital campaign strategy is experimental and run for fear of losing,” Phil Howard, a professor at the Oxford Internet Institute said. “No one wants to be the team who...
Wired: Bots Unite to Automate the Presidential Election
This originally appeared as “These are the Droids You’re Looking For: Bots as a Tool For Journalism” by Samuel Woolley and Phil Howard in the May 2016 issue of Wired Magazine. DONALD TRUMP UNDERSTANDS minority communities. Just ask Pepe Luis Lopez, Francisco Palma,...
Idea to retire: A closed-platform Internet of Things
This appeared as "Idea to retire: A closed-platform Internet of Things" on the Brookings Institution's TechTank blog. The Internet has gone through a major demographic transition: in 2015 year, the number of devices connected by the Internet surpassed the number of...
Podcast: CBC The Spark
Here is the podcast of a session I did with CBC The Spark.
Venezuela ruling party games Twitter for political gain
Contributed to an Associated Press story on the use of bots by Venezuelan political figures. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's approval ratings may be languishing below 30 percent, but on Twitter he's as popular as Pope Francis — or so...
The Internet of Things is poised to change democracy itself
This appeared as "Politics won't know what hit it: The Internet of Things is poised to change democracy itself" in Politico Magazine. In the evolving conversation about the “Internet of Things” — the growth of networked everyday objects and...
More than 26 million people have changed their Facebook picture to a rainbow flag. Here’s why that matters.
Contributed to a Washington Post story on what impact changing Facebook profile photos does, and does not, have.“Profile picture campaigns are effective in showing the friends and family in your social network that you have some affinity for...
How big is the Internet of Things and how big will it get?
This appeared in two parts for the Brookings Institution's TechTank in June 2015. Part 1 is called How big is the Internet of Things and how big will it get? and Part 2 is Sketching out the IoT Trendline. New information technologies have transformed world...