Language Sciences has articulated five key research challenge areas of focus for interdisciplinary research, including Reimagining Public Discourse (RePD).
Dr. Ron Darvin currently serves as the Lead for the research challenge area Reimagining Public Discourse.
Why 'Reimagining Public Discourse'?
Online platforms and social media have dramatically changed how we communicate with each other. They have enabled billions of people to express their views online, build coalitions for social justice, and discuss their views. At the same time, the small number of dominant platforms also constrains how people can communicate and platforms’ algorithms incentivize the production of ever more extreme content. Platforms like Facebook or Twitter also generally ground their ideas around content moderation on US English and US values of free speech rather than considering other languages and linguistic contexts.
This challenge will bring together big data analysis, business, journalism, social justice, sociology, and policy to focus on how the online environment has changed language, how it has affected public discourse, and how online expression interacts with offline language, as well as (more broadly) on rethinking what we mean by public discourse, whose voices are amplified, how regulation of online platforms affects language, and whether online public discourse is undermining democracy.