Our story
The National Internet Observatory is funded by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation: NSF Grant: Mid-scale RI-1 (M1:IP): Observatory for Online Human and Platform Behavior
Northeastern News has written several articles explaining why the Observatory is so vital for scientists: "Can we better understand online behavior? These researchers will dig deep to find out" (News@Northeastern, October 2021) and "Unprecedented data collection project, 'a huge missing piece of the study of the Internet,' now underway" (News@Northeastern, September 2022).
Lastest media
In April 2023, the 59th Annual Robert D. Klein Lecture at Northeastern was led by cybersecurity expert Christo Wilson.
Contact us
If you have questions about the research project you can contact us directly at help@nationalinternetobservatory.org.
Core team
members
David Lazer
David Lazer is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Prior to coming to Northeastern University, he was on the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School (1998-2009). In 2019, he was elected a fellow to the National Academy of Public Administration. He has published prominent work on online information consumption, democratic deliberation, collective intelligence, computational social science, and algorithmic auditing, across a wide range of prominent journals such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and the American Political Science Review. His research has received extensive coverage in the media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post, and CBS Evening News. He is a co-leader of the COVID States Project, one of the leading efforts to understand the social and political dimensions of the pandemic in the United States.
Christo Wilson
Christo Wilson is an Associate Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. He is a founding member of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern, and serves as director of the BS in Cybersecurity program. Professor Wilson's research focuses on online security and privacy, with a specific interest in algorithmic auditing. Algorithmic auditing is an emerging, interdisciplinary area that uses experimental techniques to measure the black-box algorithmic systems that pervade daily life in order to increase transparency and accountability of these systems. His work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, a Sloan Fellowship, the Mozilla Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the Anti Defamation League, the Data Transparency Lab, the European Commission, Google, Pymetrics, and Verisign Labs.
David Choffnes
David Choffnes is an associate professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, and Executive Director of Northeastern’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the ACM/CRA Computing Innovation Fellowship, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award in EECS at Northwestern University. His research has been recognized with best paper awards three times (USENIX Security 2017, NDSS 2018, IMC 2019) and two Applied Networking Research Prizes. His work has been covered by the popular press including the New York Times, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS News, PBS, NPR, the Boston Globe, NBC News, and Science Magazine, and is supported by the National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, Measurement Lab, Google, Comcast, Verizon, Arcep, and the Data Transparency Lab.
John Basl
John Basl is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Northeastern University and an associate director of the Northeastern Ethics Institute leading the institute’s AI and data ethics initiatives. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, both at Harvard University. He is a moral philosopher working primarily in AI and data ethics. He is a co-author of “Building Data and AI Ethics Committees” (published with Accenture) and “Getting from Commitment to Content in AI and Data Ethics: Justice and Explainability” (published with the Atlantic Council).
Michelle N. Meyer
Michelle N. Meyer is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Bioethics and Decision Sciences in the Geisinger College of Health Sciences and Chief Bioethics Officer at Geisinger Health System, where she is also faculty co-director of the Behavioral Insights Team in the Steele Institute for Health Innovation. Her normative and empirical work has been funded by the U.S. NIH, FDA, and NSF and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and Open Philanthropy; published in Science, Nature, PNAS, and the New England Journal of Medicine; and covered by numerous U.S. and international news outlets. She has also published in the New York Times, Slate, Wired, and the L.A. Times and served on an American Psychological Association blue ribbon commission, multiple NASEM study committees, and the editorial board of Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Science Advisory
Board members
Members of the NIO Science Advisory Board will act in an advisory capacity only.
Nick Diakopoulos
Nicholas Diakopoulos is a Professor in Communication Studies and Computer Science (by courtesy) at Northwestern University where he is Director of the Computational Journalism Lab (CJL). Diakopoulos' research is broadly oriented around topics related to Computational Journalism with active research projects on (generative) AI, automation, and algorithms in news production and distribution. He also pursues research in the area of AI, Ethics, & Society with projects related to algorithmic accountability, transparency, and impact. He is the author of the award-winning book Automating the News: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Media from Harvard University Press.
Kate Starbird
Kate Starbird is a Professor at the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington (UW). Dr. Starbird’s research sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction and the emerging field of crisis informatics — i.e. the study of the how social media and other information-communication technologies are used during crisis events. Currently, her work focuses on the production and spread of online rumors, misinformation, and disinformation during crises — including natural disasters, political disruptions, and a global pandemic. In particular, she investigates the participatory nature of online disinformation campaigns, exploring both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. Dr. Starbird received her BS in Computer Science from Stanford (1997) and her PhD in Technology, Media and Society from the University of Colorado (2012). In 2019, she co-founded the UW Center for an Informed Public.
Katherine Haenschen
Katherine Haenschen is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Communication Studies and Political Science at Northeastern University. Her work focuses on the intersection of digital media and political behaviors and attitudes. She conducts digital get-out-the-vote experiments and survey experiments, and also measures digital traces of political behaviors. Her work has appeared in Political Behavior, Journal of Communucation, Political Communication, among other outlets. She received her Ph.D. from the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.
Oana Goga
Oana Goga is a Research Director at Inria (French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation) and a member of the Inria CEDAR team and the Laboratoire d'Informatique d'Ecole Polytechnique (LIX). She investigates risks for humans and society brought by online platforms and their deployments of AI, such as advertising technologies. She looks at risks ranging from privacy to disinformation and manipulation to child protection. Her research is interdisciplinary, and she works with economists, social scientists, and legal scholars. Her work has influenced European law, and she has served as an external expert for the European Commission on problems related to data access in the Digital Services Act (DSA). She received the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2024, the Lovelace-Babbage Award from the French Science Academy and the French Computer Society in 2023, and she received an ERC Starting Grant in 2022 that aims to measure and mitigate the impact of AI-driven information targeting . Her recent research received several awards, including the Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award at PETS 2024, the Honorable Mention Award at The Web Conference in 2020, and the CNIL-Inria Award for Privacy Protection 2020.
Survey Advisory
Board members
Members of the NIO Survey Advisory Board will act in an advisory capacity only.
Katherine (Katya) Ognyanova
Katherine (Katya) Ognyanova is an associate professor at the School of Communication & Information, Rutgers University. Her research examines the effects of social influence on civic and political behavior, confidence in institutions, information evaluation, and public opinion formation.Ognyanova’s methodological expertise is in computational social science, network science, and survey research. She is the director of the Rutgers Computational Social Science Lab. Her recent work examines the association of misinformation exposure with trust in science, media, and politics. She is also investigating public perceptions and trust in artificial intelligence (AI).Katherine Ognyanova is one of the founders and a principal investigator for the COVID States Project and the Civic Health and Institutions Project, two large multi-university initiatives exploring public attitudes to politics and health.
Ethics Advisory
Board members
Members of the NIO Ethics Advisory Board will act in an advisory capacity only.
Megan Doerr
Megan Doerr, MS, LGC is Director of Applied ELSI Research at Sage Bionetworks, where she works on operationalizing and evaluating community interests in big data research. She focuses on scaling participant-centric approaches to inform and hone repository-enabled research, addressing the ethical, legal, and social implications of informed consent, research participation, data governance, and data sharing. Consistent with Sage Bionetworks’ mission as a non-profit open science organization, Ms. Doerr takes an open approach to developing knowledge and best practices and sharing insights, tools, and approaches as rapidly and as broadly as possible. She advocates for innovative, data-driven, and human-centered approaches to open science, contributing to multinational initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. Ms. Doerr is a licensed genetic counselor who previously practiced at the Cleveland Clinic.
Jasmine McNealy
Jasmine McNealy (JD, PhD) is an attorney, critical public interest technologist, and social scientist who studies emerging media & technology with a view toward influencing law and policy. Her research emphasizes technological ecosystems, privacy, surveillance, and data governance. She is a Policy Fellow with the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN), and a professor at the University of Florida where she directs ICED Labs. She is also Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Nancy Kass
Nancy Kass, ScD, is the Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health at Johns Hopkins, where she is also both the Deputy Director for Public Health in the Berman Institute of Bioethics and Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Kass conducts empirical work in bioethics and health policy. Her publications are primarily in the field of U.S. and global research ethics, public health ethics, infectious diseases and ethics policy, and ethics and the learning healthcare system. From June 2023-June 2024 she served as Ethics Advisor, Office of the Commissioner, at the Food and Drug Administration through an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) arrangement. From 2017-2023 Dr. Kass served as Vice-Provost for Graduate Education for Johns Hopkins University. In 2009-2010, Dr. Kass was based in Geneva, Switzerland, working with the World Health Organization (WHO) Ethics Review Committee Secretariat. Dr. Kass is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and an elected fellow of the Hastings Center.
Strategy Advisory
Board members
Members of the NIO Strategy Advisory Board will act in an advisory capacity only.
Margaret Levenstein
Margaret Levenstein is Director of ICPSR, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Founded in 1962, ICPSR is the largest curated social science data archive in the world and a recipient of a 2019 National Medal for Museum and Library Service.
Levenstein is also Research Professor at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, Professor in the School of Information, and Adjunct Professor of Business Economics and Policy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. She is the Principal Investigator of the NSF infrastructure project, Research Data Ecosystem, and the NIH's Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID-19 Consortium Coordinating Center. She is Co-Director of the Michigan Federal Statistical Research Data Center, co-chair of the FSRDC Executive Committee, and Associate Chair for Survey of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She serves on the boards of the Social Science Research Council, Computational Antitrust, OpenDP, Coordinated Access for Data, Researchers and Environments (CADRE), the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), the Network on Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities in 21st Century America, Databrary, and the Qualitative Data Repository.
Dan Cohen
Dan Cohen is the Vice Provost for Information Collaboration, Dean of the Library, and Professor of History at Northeastern University. His work has focused on the impact of digital media and technology on all aspects of knowledge and learning, from the nature of libraries and their evolving resources, to twenty-first century research techniques and software tools, to the changing landscape of communication and publication. He has directed major initiatives that have helped to shape that future.
Prior to his tenure at Northeastern, he was the founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America, which brought together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and made them freely available to the world.
Carla Brodley
Carla E. Brodley is the Dean of Inclusive Computing and the Founding Executive Director of the Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC) at Northeastern University. A $50M initiative, the CIC funds and advises universities in the United States to remove systemic barriers that prevent women of all races and ethnicities from discovering and persisting in computing. In this role, she works with presidents, provosts, deans and chairs at over 80 universities, raising money from government, corporations and philanthropists. Previously, she served as Dean of Khoury College of Computer Sciences (2014-2021). A fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Dean Brodley’s interdisciplinary machine learning research led to advances not only in computer science, but in many other areas including remote sensing, neuroscience, digital libraries, astrophysics, content- based image retrieval of medical images, computational biology, chemistry, evidence-based medicine, and predictive medicine.