Launch: Data Knowledge Hub

“Online discourse has changed how we inform ourselves, what and who to trust, as well as how information is quite simply accessed. Notably on online platforms and social media, recommender systems and other design features can be gamed to fuel disinformation, hate speech, and outrage. In addition, messaging services and alternative platforms are increasingly falling risk to exploitation and providing agitators with vast audiences to spread falsehoods. But how and why exactly this is happening remains under-researched and merely anecdotally illustrated. If we want to strengthen our information ecosystem and increase each other’s ability to decide what’s trustworthy and what’s not, we need to move from anecdotes to broad, continuous, and ideally real-time data-driven insight.”, argue my colleague, Charlotte Freihse, and I in our recent launch announcement.

The Data Knowledge Hub is a collaborative project that aims to break the barriers for monitoring social media and online discourse. Hosted Open Source and under Creative Commons license on GitHub, it continuously welcomes contributions of new data, code, and written content, fostering a collaborative environment for all: https://data-knowledge-hub.com/

Would love to hear if and how it works for you, and what you’d need to make it an even more useful resource going forward.