Name: Sookie Lee

Social Justice Group: Cults and Online Radicalization

Date of Fieldwork: January 25th, 2023

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s): Jason Shultz, NYU professor of Clinical Law

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work, or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?

At 9:00am on January 25th, I and my groupmate Tiffany walked down to greet Jason Shultz in the LREI Lower and Middle School lobby. Jason is a professor at NYU college and had lots of useful information about the law-based side of online radicalization.

We talked to Jason about so many fascinating and important things but the things that stood out to me was how people can use ai to create bots that target one person or one race, gender, sexuality, class, e.t.c, and tell the bots to write hundreds of tweets targeting them/that thing that doesn’t violate the right of free speech. He also mentioned how sometimes people use this online hate for money. If you get enough attention on social media the companies send you money so some people are creating these messages of hate because they know they will “go viral” and they will be paid. But as you can see enough people doing this, and most people being unaware, these ideas could stick with someone and then change them in real life as well as their online presence.

This interview really helped our group add important quotes and facts and gave us so much useful information to help us move forward.