Major Federal Grant Awarded to MSU and Merit Network
Announcing MSU and Merit Network as joint recipients of a $10.5 million National Telecommunications and Information Administration Broadband Infrastructure Program Grant to build out “middle mile” networking supporting high-speed internet/broadband to underserved areas of Michigan. From left: NTIA Special Representative for Broadband Andy Berke, Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist III, MSU Board of Trustees Member Renee Knake-Jefferson, MSU President Samuel L. Stanley, MSU Executive VP for Administration Melissa Woo, Quello Center Director Johannes M. Bauer, Merit President and CEO Joe Sawasky.
Full press release with more information.
Quello Center and Community Partners Recognized with 2022 MSU Distinguished Partnership Award
Featured Research Project:
The Role of Ethics in Information Policy
Research team: Johannes M. Bauer (Quello Center, MSU)
Recent working paper: Bauer, Johannes M., New Guardrails for the Information Society (September 12, 2021). Quello Center Working Paper No. 05-21, Available at SSRN and DOI.
Overcoming COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A United States-United Kingdom Comparison
Achieving a high overall vaccination rate is crucial for overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic. To prevent widening inequalities, it is also important to increase vaccination rates among the diverse populations that are most gravely affected by the pandemic. Governmental, healthcare, and policy groups need data to guide their strategic vaccination campaigns. This policy brief presents insights from data collected shortly before vaccines were formally approved. Our analysis helps to understand the factors that influence the willingness to be vaccinated and informs strategies to reach vaccine hesitant populations.
Download Quello Center Policy Brief
Broadband and Student Performance Gaps: A Checklist for K12 Schools Considering Online Teaching in Response to COVID-19
School districts face difficult choices. Large scale shifts in public education to an online curriculum must consider inequalities in broadband access, devices and skills, as well as parental and caretaker involvement. However, these inequalities cannot be overcome immediately. Unless schools decide against online teaching altogether because of these concerns (a strategy that has disadvantages for connected students), they need to find responses that minimize potential disadvantages for vulnerable populations. Key considerations are (1) offering of measures to improve the capacity of teachers, parents and learners to adapt to online learning, (2) appropriate design and use of distance learning, and (3) short-term measures to improve access to broadband. Quello Center Policy Brief 01-20 lays out options for short-term and long-term responses to the crisis.
Four Things A School District Needs to Know Before Moving Education Online
Download Quello Center Policy Brief 01-20 | Download Broadband and Performance Gap Report
Keith N. Hampton receives the William F. Ogburn Career Achievement Award from the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology
After years of efforts by public interest groups, the federal government made digital equity an explicit goal of infrastructure policy. Originally
Johannes M. Bauer, will share research on the governance of the digital economy at the Weizenbaum Institute online symposium New Perspectives on the Digital Economy: Sharing, Platforms & Regulation, Friday, December 2, 2022, 10:15 AM-6:46 PM CET. Specifically, his presentation An Information-Economic Perspective on Platform Governance, scheduled for 1 PM CET, will suggest a new conceptual framework for the design of digital platform policy that avoids some of the shortcomings of prevailing approaches. The full program is available at https://plamadiso.weizenbaum-institut.de/symposium-digital-economy/ and registration is free.
David Clark, Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Via Zoom | RSVP Here | or email quello@msu.edu Much attention today is focused on security challenges faced by computers attached to the Internet: system penetration, malware, ransomware, and so on. The security of the Internet itself seems to get less attention, but most of the key systems that make up the packet carriage layer of the Internet suffer from serious vulnerabilities that are exploited today be malicious actors. The Internet service is the foundation on top of which all applications are build, and these vulnerabilities can have an impact […]
Rachel Kowert, Ph.D Research Director of Take This Keynote at Meaningful Play Conference | RSVP Here | or email quello@msu.edu In this talk, Dr. Kowert will explore the ways in which toxic behavior and toxic gamer cultures permeate beyond the virtual walls of our digital playgroups. This will include a discussion of the normalization of hate in gaming spaces and the games industry as well as overview who and how these actions are impacting. While toxic gamer culture is often downplayed or believed to live exclusively within online spaces, it has a radius of impact on mental health, workplace culture, and even extremism and […]