The Consent of the Governed After 250 Years: Democracy in the Age of AI and Social Media
Content
The Community, Democracy & Dialogue (CDD) initiative seeks promote critical inquiry and facilitate dialogue about our most pressing geopolitical issues. This year, the CDD will host an event featuring panelists Manish Sinha, Jonathan Nagler, and Ethan Zuckerman in conversation around two fields of interest that are driving discourse in todays’ sociopolitical sphere: AI and the democratic process. After speaker presentations, Dr. Jane Fountain will lead a moderated discussion of the challenges and opportunities facing democratic society given the rise of AI and social media.
About the Speakers:
Manisha Sinha
Manisha Sinha, historian and author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico and cited in The New York Times 1619 Project), currently serves as the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Sinha’s work explores the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She taught at UMass Amherst for over twenty years, where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest recognition bestowed on faculty. Her latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 was awarded the biennial President’s Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era in 2026.
Jonathan Nagler
Professor of Politics at NYU and co-author of Who Votes Now? Demographics, Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States, Jonathan Nagler serves as the Director of the Politics Data Center and co-director of the NYU Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics (CSMAP). His current research on examines on the impact of social media on voter behavior and attitudes, and he has been at the forefront of computational social science for many years, pioneering innovative methods for analysis of discrete choice problems.
Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman is an associate professor of public policy, communication, and information, as well as director of the UMass Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure. The author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection and Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them, his research focuses on civic media, online community governance, digital public infrastructure, quantitative studies of media attention, technology, and social change. Before coming to UMass, Zuckerman was at MIT, where he served as director of the Center for Civic Media and as associate professor of practice in media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab.
Moderated by Jane Fountain
Jane E. Fountain is Director of the School of Public Policy and Distinguished Professor, as well as an Adjunct Distinguished Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Political Science at UMass Amherst. Her recent research is focused on artificial intelligence, digitalization, governance and institutional change and on cross-boundary management and governance. Fountain is coeditor of Artificial Intelligence and Power in Government (in press, with Sorin Dan and Niina Mäntylä) and the author of Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change, which was awarded an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice.