"Data Are Made, Not Found" is an ethnographic account of the 2020 US census, revealing how an amazing collection of civil servants managed to produce democracy's data, despite a pandemic and a range of political challenges. This book describes the costs of "Jenga politics" - and what it will take to repair the administrative state in the decades to come.

When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, I argue that the very essence of social media has changed. To more effectively interrogate what we are witnessing, we need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.” Doing so raises new questions about digitally mediated sociality, not to mention the politics and governance of these platforms.

The Project of AI is a world-building endeavor, wherein those who fund and develop AI systems both operate through and seek to sustain networks of power and wealth. As they expand their access to resources and configure our sociotechnical conditions, they benefit from the ways in which a suite of decoys animate scholars, critics, policymakers, journalists, and the public into co-constructing industry-empowering AI futures. Regardless of who constructs or nurtures them, these decoys often create the illusion of accountability while both masking the emerging political economies that the Project of AI has set into motion, and also contributing to the network-making power that is at the heart of the Project's extraction and exploitation.

This book explores the myths that adults have about teens' use of technology, unpacking why teenagers turn to social media. Despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, teens often find ways to be creative, connect with friends, and to develop a sense of identity. And technology plays a role in that. Moreover, society often fails young people. What we see online often mirrors and magnifies the good, bad, and ugly of everyday life.