RCN: Democracy in the Networked Era

This project is a Research Coordination Network (RCN) whose purpose is to bring experts together across disciplines to share information, insights, and technological capabilities that bear on research topics surrounding democracy in the era of networked information. The activities enable knowledge exchange and new collaborations, and the outputs will synthesize key insights and translate them for stakeholders within and outside of academia. The RCN also supports the development of data infrastructure necessary for research on the information ecosystem and facilitates the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, information, and resources among researchers. This RCN facilitates new interactions through meetings and workshops led by a steering committee of scholars in diverse fields that include political science, computer science, and communication. These engagements are designed to contribute to a publicly accessible online hub that includes papers, data sets and tools, teaching materials, and other resources that relevant to academic and non-academic stakeholders. The RCN supports the diversity of the field of scholars and engineers all groups and informs policymakers and other stakeholders on key issues related to democracy in the networked era. The RCN can serve as a conduit for translating research findings for the policy community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.