Elisa Shearer's guest appearances

Elisa Shearer

Tech Policy Leaders

Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

Kevin Clark

Jessica Gonzalez

Kim Scott

Meredith Broussard

Danielle Citron

Jessica Lee

Ron Busby

Matt Wood

Sarah Morris

Rachel Rodgers

Larry Miller

David Robinson

Anindya Ghose

Melinda Epler

Ajit Pai

OwlTail

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.communityEveryone seems to have a podcast nowadays, actors, athletes, comedians, and even politicians. You clearly like them since you’re here right now, and thank you for that. But what do other people think about podcasts? Well, the Pew Research Center just came out with new report about podcasts and how people are listening and watching them.Joining us to talk about that is Elisa Shearer. She is a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, she’s worked there for eight years, and she’s the lead author of this new study.MEMBERSHIP BENEFITSIn order to keep Theory of Change sustainable, the full audio, video, and transcript for this episode are available to subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube.ABOUT THE SHOWTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChangeMatthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffieldMatthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit <a href="https://theoryofchange.flux.community?utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_campaign=CTA_7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">theoryofchange.flux.community</a> Everyone seems to have a podcast nowadays, actors, athletes, comedians, and even politicians. You clearly like them since you’re here right now, and thank you for that. But what do other people think about podcasts? Well, the Pew Research Center just came out with <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2023/04/18/how-americans-use-and-engage-with-podcasts/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">new report about podcasts</a> and how people are listening and watching them.Joining us to talk about that is <a href="https://twitter.com/ElisaShearer" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Elisa Shearer</a>. She is a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/elisa-shearer/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">senior researcher at the Pew Research Center</a>, she’s worked there for eight years, and she’s the lead author of this new study.MEMBERSHIP BENEFITSIn order to keep Theory of Change sustainable, the full audio, video, and transcript for this episode are available to subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with <a href="https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Patreon</a> or <a href="https://theoryofchange.substack.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Substack</a>.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via <a href="https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PayPal</a>.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkmucd07dnIOY9Gf2HZ5Y5w/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">subscribe to the show on YouTube</a>.ABOUT THE SHOWTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at <a href="http://flux.community" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">flux.community</a> to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.Theory of Change on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/TheoryChange" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/TheoryChange</a>Matthew Sheffield on Mastodon: <a href="https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield</a>Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/mattsheffield" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/mattsheffield</a>

Theory of Change #069: Elisa Shearer on why people listen to podcasts

Bio   Elisa Shearer (@elisashearer) is a Research Associate at the Pew Research Center. She earned her Masters in Communications,  Culture, and Technology from Georgetown and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Houghton College, from which she graduated Magna Cum Laude.   Resources  Americans are Wary of the Role Social Media Sites Play in Delivering the News by Elisa Shearer and Elizabeth Grieco (Pew, 2019) Pew Research Journalism (Twitter)  News Roundup  Facebook’s Menlo Park Police  Motherboard reports on Facebook’s comfortable relationship with the Menlo Park Police Department. Apparently, Facebook is paying the City of Menlo Park some $2 million per year – a large some for a small city – to have a dedicated police force for Facebook’s campus. One of the things the Facebook unit does is monitor for thefts of bikes the company sets out for its employees. The employees aren’t permitted to leave the bikes outside of Facebook’s campus, but they often do it anyway. Sometimes citizens in the neighboring community, East Palo Alto, use the bikes. The majority of citizens on East Palo Alto are black or Latinx. One of the people the cops picked up for using one of the bikes was Latinx. But it turns out the employee was a Facebook contractor.  So citizens and advocates have called out the police and Facebook for working together on racial profiling. It’s a long read, but you can find the full report in the show notes.  AOC Blasts Facebook for Political Ad Policy Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Facebook on Twitter on Saturday, calling the company’s political behavior “increasingly disturbing”. Connecting the dots, the Congresswoman noted that Zuckerberg claimed he didn’t know when Facebook discovered the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that Zuckerberg met with Trump, and the far right thenm started allowing disinformation ads, and that Zuckerberg didn’t tell the whole truth about fact checkers. She says that Facebook acts like they’re just an innocent bystander but that Facebook’s decisions have become more and more disturbing. According to the New York Times, Hundreds of Facebook employees wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg urging him to hold ads placed by politicians to the same high accuracy standard as those placed by any advertiser.    House passes third election security bill The House has passed a third election security bill designed to prevent foreign interference in the 2020 election. The bill passed 221-181 mostly along party lines. The act is dubbed the SHIELD act and it targets paid online political ads. Republicans raised First Amendment concerns about the bill, and the American Civil Liberties Union said that it sweeps to broadly.    Facebook announces Russian efforts to remain undetected According to Reuters, Russian operatives attempting to interfere with the platform ahead of the 2020 election are trying to remain invisible by sacrificing followers. Facebook is specifically flagging accounts that grow very quickly.    Google employees claim company is developing a tool to stop organizers Google employees are claiming that the company is creating a tool to monitor calendar invites to try and prevent staffers from organizing. The tool would apparently flag employees that create events with more than 10 rooms or 100 people. Google denies that the tool is designed to thwart organizing efforts.    Pentagon awards $10 billion contrat to Microsoft The Pentagon awarded its 10 year, $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to Microsoft, closing it off from Amazon, which was expected to win the deal, as it was considered by many analysts to have the best capabilities. But Microsoft too has the highest military security rating possible. A former speechwriter for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that President Trump wanted to “screw over” Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos,  who also owns the Washington Post—one of the news outlets the president thinks is biased against him. But the Pentagon states that its awarding of the contract to Microsoft is in line with an overall multi-platform strategy, that can’t be handled by a single vendor.   Google announces quantum computing milestone   Google announced a quantum computing milestone last week, saying that it had developed a microprocessor that took minutes to perform a calculation that would have taken the world’s best super computer thousands of years.

Bio Elisa Shearer (<a href="https://twitter.com/ElisaShearer" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@elisashearer</a>) is a Research Associate at the Pew Research Center. She earned her Masters in Communications,  Culture, and Technology from Georgetown and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Houghton College, from which she graduated Magna Cum Laude.   Resources <a href="https://www.journalism.org/2019/10/02/americans-are-wary-of-the-role-social-media-sites-play-in-delivering-the-news/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Americans are Wary of the Role Social Media Sites Play in Delivering the News by Elisa Shearer and Elizabeth Grieco</a> (Pew, 2019) <a href="https://twitter.com/pewjournalism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pew Research Journalism (Twitter)</a>  News Roundup <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3akm7/how-facebook-bought-a-police-force" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Facebook’s Menlo Park Police</a>  Motherboard reports on Facebook’s comfortable relationship with the Menlo Park Police Department. Apparently, Facebook is paying the City of Menlo Park some $2 million per year – a large some for a small city – to have a dedicated police force for Facebook’s campus. One of the things the Facebook unit does is monitor for thefts of bikes the company sets out for its employees. The employees aren’t permitted to leave the bikes outside of Facebook’s campus, but they often do it anyway. Sometimes citizens in the neighboring community, East Palo Alto, use the bikes. The majority of citizens on East Palo Alto are black or Latinx. One of the people the cops picked up for using one of the bikes was Latinx. But it turns out the employee was a Facebook contractor.  So citizens and advocates have called out the police and Facebook for working together on racial profiling. It’s a long read, but you can find the full report in the show notes. <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/467596-ocasio-cortez-blasts-facebooks-ad-decisions-calling-them-increasingly" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> AOC Blasts Facebook for Political Ad Policy</a> Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Facebook on Twitter on Saturday, calling the company’s political behavior “increasingly disturbing”. Connecting the dots, the Congresswoman noted that Zuckerberg claimed he didn’t know when Facebook discovered the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that Zuckerberg met with Trump, and the far right thenm started allowing disinformation ads, and that Zuckerberg didn’t tell the whole truth about fact checkers. She says that Facebook acts like they’re just an innocent bystander but that Facebook’s decisions have become more and more disturbing. According to the New York Times, Hundreds of Facebook employees wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg urging him to hold ads placed by politicians to the same high accuracy standard as those placed by any advertiser. <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/467185-house-passes-third-bill-aimed-at-preventing-foreign-election-interference" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> House passes third election security bill</a> The House has passed a third election security bill designed to prevent foreign interference in the 2020 election. The bill passed 221-181 mostly along party lines. The act is dubbed the SHIELD act and it targets paid online political ads. Republicans raised First Amendment concerns about the bill, and the American Civil Liberties Union said that it sweeps to broadly. <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/technology/467317-russian-facebook-operatives-sacrifice-followers-to-stay-under" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Facebook announces Russian efforts to remain undetected</a> According to Reuters, Russian operatives attempting to interfere with the platform ahead of the 2020 election are trying to remain invisible by sacrificing followers. Facebook is specifically flagging accounts that grow very quickly. <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/technology/467213-employees-accuse-google-of-creating-surveillance-tool-to-monitor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Google employees claim company is developing a tool to stop organizers</a> Google employees are claiming that the company is creating a tool to monitor calendar invites to try and prevent staffers from organizing. The tool would apparently flag employees that create events with more than 10 rooms or 100 people. Google denies that the tool is designed to thwart organizing efforts. <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/467545-pentagon-awards-10-billion-cloud-contract-to-microsoft-over-amazon" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Pentagon awards $10 billion contrat to Microsoft</a> The Pentagon awarded its 10 year, $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to Microsoft, closing it off from Amazon, which was expected to win the deal, as it was considered by many analysts to have the best capabilities. But Microsoft too has the highest military security rating possible. A former speechwriter for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that President Trump wanted to “screw over” Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos,  who also owns the Washington Post—one of the news outlets the president thinks is biased against him. But the Pentagon states that its awarding of the contract to Microsoft is in line with an overall multi-platform strategy, that can’t be handled by a single vendor. <a href="https://apnews.com/f5d8f10adbdb4b50838b7f1aaf2c023d" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google announces quantum computing milestone</a> Google announced a quantum computing milestone last week, saying that it had developed a <a href="https://apnews.com/f5d8f10adbdb4b50838b7f1aaf2c023d" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">microprocessor</a> that took minutes to perform a calculation that would have taken the world’s best super computer thousands of years.

Elisa Shearer: Should Americans Trust News on Social Media?