East Lansing, December 2025.

MSUToday has published a helpful summary of new research findings from earlier this year with Keith Hampton and Kelley Cotter. The study confirms a key finding: young people from rural areas who attend university develop more racially and ethnically diverse social contacts. This increased diversity is directly related to them becoming more socially tolerant (i.e., more accepting of different people). Historically, this change did little to increase social tolerance within rural areas, as students typically reduced contact with their home communities and often chose not to move back after graduation. However, social media may be altering this dynamic. The research explores two competing hypotheses regarding how students maintaining their home ties via social media could affect their networks and tolerance:

1) Maintaining ties back home through social media appears to constrain the diversity of the students’ networks, thereby limiting social tolerance.

2) Conversely, it appears to expand the networks of the rural contacts they maintain online (we studied parents), which could ultimately reduce intolerance that tends to be more prevalent in rural communities.

The paper can be downloaded or read here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2460556
The MSU Today Post can be found here: https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2025/12/how-social-media-shapes-tolerance-echo-chambers

The online talk was co-sponsored with the Pew Broadband Access Initiative

Laasya Koduru, UC Santa Barbra

Thursday, December 11, 2025,

Via Zoom | Check back for the recording

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Effective broadband policy depends on accurate, granular data on service availability, speeds, and prices—yet existing datasets are often self-reported, inconsistent, and insufficient for evaluating affordability or targeting public investments. This talk will introduce the Broadband-Plan Querying Tool (BQT), which independently collects advertised broadband plans directly from ISP websites at street-address resolution to provide a more reliable evidence base. It will show how BQT enabled audits of the FCC’s Connect America Fund (CAF), revealing significant gaps in serviceability and compliance, and how the enhanced code-free BQT+ now supports over 50 ISPs to power statewide assessments such as the Pew and JCOTS studies on affordability, competition, and BEAD readiness. The talk will conclude with a roadmap for BQT+ as a sustainable data resource—supporting challenge processes, monitoring affordability over time, and equipping states with the independent data needed to design effective, equitable broadband interventions.

The broadband plan querying tool (BQT) automates interaction with an ISP’s web interface to obtain the set of Internet access plans (prices and speeds) available at a street-level residential address.   BQT captures the Broadband nutrition label, which includes data for all available plans such as the maximum upload speeds, download speeds, and corresponding prices in US dollars.  It also captures any ISP discounts advertised to users.  In its current version (BQT+), BQT+ offers improved robustness and scalability over its predecessor.  New ISPs can be more easily and quickly added, and modifications to existing ISP web interfaces are more easily accommodated.  BQT+ can handle drop-down address selection and other features commonly incorporated into web pages that require user interaction. BQT and BQT+ have been applied to a variety of projects, including in partnership with multiple government and non-profit entities.

For full event information check out our events page.

Shane Greenstein, Harvard Business School

Watch the recording: HERE
More information: https://quello.msu.edu/event/the-digital-usage-divide-evidence-and-new-measures-from-40-million-windows-devices/

The talk was based on a recent NBER working paper by Mayana Pereira, Shane Greenstein, Raffaella Sadun, Prasanna Tambe, Lucia Ronchi Darre, Tammy Glazer, Allen Kim, Rahul Dodhia, & Juan Lavista Ferres (several of the co-authors are affiliated with Microsoft Research, the paper is available here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32932). Starting from the fact that access to digital infrastructure is crucial for economic opportunities, social inclusion, and civic participation the paper analyzes new dimensions of how the use of digital technologies is unevenly distributed, leaving some communities unable to fully benefit from new technologies. Current measurements often rely on basic indicators, such as computer ownership and broadband adoption, which do not adequately capture the depth and variety of digital usage. We build and analyze new measures of digital usage that leverage telemetry data collected by Microsoft during operating system updates across 40 million Windows devices in U.S. households. These measures of U.S. household digital usage are significantly more comprehensive than those provided by any existing commercial or government survey. We construct representations of devices in ZIP codes and find evidence of significant variation in usage reflecting an urban-rural divide. We also show the existence of substantial disparities in usage even within narrowly defined Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Income and education correlate with these observed differences. These effects are large and suggest digital usage gaps that extend beyond the availability of essential IT infrastructure at the local level. These findings call for interventions beyond the traditional focus on infrastructure access and address usage and skills development. The indices are made publicly available to support future research.

For full event information check out our events page.

Quello Center researchers had a strong presence at the 53^rd Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy in Washington, D.C., September 19-20, 2025 (TPRC53). Elizabeth Mack, Johannes M. Bauer, Megan Knittel, Information and Media doctoral students Angie Nam and Boram Lee, and economics/data science undergraduate student Dhimaan  Bhattacharya presented their paper The State of Bead: Assessing Progress Toward Universal Broadband Connectivity, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5376286. Johannes M. Bauer chaired a paper session on Speed Tests and Broadband Literacy. He also co-organized a panel discussion on Governing Generative AI, featuring Erik Bohlin (Chalmers University), Nicol Turner Lee (Brookings Institution), and Madelyn Sanfilippo (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign).

This talk explores the imperative to measure digital trust as both a public good and a strategic asset. Drawing on conceptual insights from the World Economic Forum and recent academic work, Dr Chew introduces a multi-dimensional framework that accounts for the interplay between system attributes, individual dispositions, and lived outcomes in shaping digital trust.

For full event information check out our events page.

East Lansing, July 7, 2025

In response to the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice of June 6, 2025, the Quello Center released a revised and updated version of its framework for the assessment of the effects of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act of 2021 on high-speed Internet access, digital equity, and community development. Bauer, J.M., Mack, E., Nam, A., Lee, Boram, & Knittel, M. Assessing the Effects of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on High-Speed Internet Access, Digital Equity, and Community Development. Revised and Updated, East Lansing, Michigan: Quello Center at Michigan State University, July 7, 2025.

The Center also put together a checklist for State Broadband Offices (SBOs) on the minimum data needed for the effective monitoring and evaluation of the BEAD infrastructure deployment program. Quello Center. Data Requirements for the Effective Evaluation of the Restructured BEAD Program. A Guide and Checklist for Practitioners. East Lansing, Michigan: Quello Center at Michigan State University, July 7, 2025.

East Lansing, June 2025. In a new, peer reviewed publication, Quello Center researchers Gabriel Hales and Keith Hampton argue that it’s time to rethink the conventional moral panic surrounding screen time and academic achievement. The prevailing focus on displacement effects tells only half the story. The authors demonstrate how adolescents’ casual engagement with social media, video games, and other digital leisure activities cultivates broader digital skills. These skills are positively associated with substantially higher standardized test scores on the SAT in reading and writing, and a smaller, yet significant, boost in math. However, gender-based media preferences—with boys favoring video games and girls tending towards social media—lead to unequal benefits from these digital engagements. While digital skills developed through these activities can narrow the reading and writing achievement gap between boys and girls on the SAT, girls experience fewer benefits in closing the math achievement gap. There is a real danger that trends prioritizing structured, adult-supervised, overtly educational activities at the expense of unstructured leisure time both on and offline are doing more harm than good. We must shift research, policy, and parenting practices  to recognize the profound benefits of casual leisure (both online and offline) for adolescent well-being and development.

The paper can be downloaded or read here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2516542

On April 18, 2025 at 10 AM EDT, we hosted a talk on (Re)Working AI: Designing Workplace Technologies with and for Labor with Sarah Fox, Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

More information HERE

April 14, 2025 at 12 PM EDT, we hosted a talk on Full Stack AI Governance with Robert Gorwa, WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Michael Veale, University College London.

Every time someone trains, deploys, or queries an ‘artificial intelligence’ system, whether they know it or not, they are implicating the practices and services of an enormous number of interlinked businesses in the AI ‘stack’.  In this talk, Robert Gorwa and Michael Veale will present early findings from their ongoing book project on emerging public-private regulatory practices emerging across this stack, focusing on what does, could, and should be done to prevent very real emergent forms of AI misuse. As more obligations and responsibilities are foisted on or taken up by the various intermediaries that facilitate access to AI systems (e.g. cloud providers, model hosts, internet infrastructure providers), the talk will introduce some of the extremely tricky tensions relating to technological control, generativity, analytic capacity, and privacy that lay ahead.

 

On April 4, 2025, the Internet Governance Project (IGP) in collaboration with the Quello Center gathered scholars of differing views to debate what digital sovereignty means, how it is being used as a label, and whether the various interpretations of the term are compatible with the foundational values of the open internet.

The five panelists engaged in a spirited and controversial debate. If you missed it, please check out the video at: https://youtu.be/e-y1Iz7eXVE?si=JuiLVwySnlFuBdz5.

East Lansing, October 25, 2024

Supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts Broadband Access Initiative, this report develops a framework for the assessment of the effects of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act of 2021 on high-speed Internet access, digital equity, and community development. With the funding authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act 2021 (Infrastructure Act), the federal government, states, and communities will have a window of opportunity to close digital connectivity gaps improve digital equity, and to transform communities. The scale and diversity of current federal, state, and local policy initiatives creates a needs transparency and accountability to assure the responsible use of public funds.

Even though the Infrastructure Act and NTIA implementation guidelines supply an integrative framework, states and territories have developed varying models to meet their specific needs. Given the many challenges of such a large-scale effort, it is to be expected that some will be more effective than others. If properly monitored and evaluated, these variations can be translated into knowledge that can help improve all programs for the remaining duration of the program. The first report from the project, released today, develops principles to ease the burden on eligible entities of meeting their statutory reporting requirements and to guide data collection, program monitoring, and impact evaluation going forward.

For more information see quello.msu.edu/iija-assessment

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: Tuesday, September 10, 2024

After two years, Project MOON-Light, a network-wide, significant upgrade of Michigan’s middle mile Internet infrastructure, was completed. MOON-Light is a collaboration between Michigan State University, Merit Network, and the Quello Center. It was supported in part by a grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Infrastructure Program. The enhanced middle mile capabilities will enable local internet service providers to connect residents and businesses in unserved areas of the state and improve the quality of service to areas that are currently served by lower access speed and quality of service. Representatives from the Quello Center, Michigan State University, Merit Network, NTIA, Merit Network member organizations, and internet service providers, celebrated the completion of the project with an event at Michigan State University.

 

The recording of our live-streamed the event  can be watched here: https://hubs.la/Q02PcqlQ0

East Lansing, MI – August 22, 2023. This study was designed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on home Internet connectivity, student achievement, and adolescent well-being. The focus is on middle and high school students enrolled in rural and small-town schools.

It builds on the findings of a study on Broadband and Student Performance Gaps released in the weeks before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (Hampton et al., 2020). That report highlighted the low levels of broadband access by rural Michigan students and the detrimental impact from a lack of access on their academic performance, educational aspirations, career choices, and general well-being. In 2022, we returned to the same schools that we first surveyed in 2019. We asked students about their experience with Internet technologies and with learning from home during the pandemic. Our findings paint a picture of how rural school districts and other stakeholders rapidly mobilized to address a national crisis. In a remarkably short period of time, schools accessed state and federal resources to close gaps in rural Internet access and computing devices.

More information.

Download

East Lansing, MI – February 24, 2023. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA) and the Digital Equity Act of 2021 (DEA) establish a broad framework and significant funding to advance broadband connectivity and digital equity. Both Acts recognize that closing the broadband access and device gaps are necessary first steps toward digital equity. To fully realize the full benefits of digital technology for individuals, communities, and society at large additional efforts are needed.

The Digital Opportunities Compass offers a framework to assist in the development of state plans that meet the reporting and assessment requirements of IIJA and DEA but go beyond access and affordability to fully harness the benefits of digital technology. As communities and states develop plans to improve digital equity, it is important to establish a shared framework to establish goals and priorities, to identify opportunities, and monitor progress toward these goals.