The topic of American political partisanship and polarization has become a staple of both academic research and the political news cycle. A search for the word “polarization” in any major newspaper or news magazine turns up dozens of articles, op-eds, and think pieces either decrying the phenomenon or wholeheartedly endorsing it. We see it in family members at the dinner table, in our celebrities on Twitter, and in our politicians on the podium. Definitions may vary by field, by frame, and sometimes by convenience to an argument, but the consensus is this: Political polarization exists, and it’s increasing.

In this essay series, scholars probe the affordances and challenges of quantitative studies of media accuracy. Getting a clear sense of how accurate news media are across topics, time, and outlets can not only provide news producers and scholars an assessment of their own work, but can also give a more holistic picture of how (and whether) media consumers obtain the basic facts required for informed democratic citizenship.

Commonly misnamed “revenge porn,” image-based abuse is the non-consensual creation and distribution of private images. Much more than “one-off” attacks that cause hurt feelings, image-based abuse has become a broad effort to silence and shame people in public spaces. This literature review brings together relevant research from the fields of law, communication, psychology, and public health to explain how image-based abuse has become an ever-present threat to privacy, safety, and speech.

When a contentious and complicated topic, like vaccine efficacy, arises in online conversations, how can health communicators de-escalate conflict, increase understanding, and build common ground? In a collaboration between Hacks/Hackers’ Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT) project, MediaWell is calling for scholars in relevant fields to contribute to a interdisciplinary research review on how to improve information exchanges and build trust, both online and off.

Researchers studying digital media data face a host of challenges. In this essay, researcher Josephine Lukito outlines the issues facing the field, including data access, storage, analysis, and ethical concerns, and outlines some recommendations for advancing the field.