The Public Sphere Needs Public Social Media

Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of public policy, information and communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and director of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure. His research focuses on alternative business and governance models for the internet. He is the author of Mistrust: How Losing Trust in Institutions Provides Tools to Transform Them (2021) and Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (2013). Previously, Zuckerman directed the Center for Civic Media at MIT and taught at the MIT Media Lab. He and his family live in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts, USA.