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Articles by Rachel Moran
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In Election Betting, Voters Face the Highest Stakes
Election-betting markets have existed in academic environments for decades, but the launch of Polymarket in 2020 and Kalshi in 2021 has opened these markets to the general public, with major impacts to the regulatory and information environment. As the Biden administration came into office, it took a purposeful federal regulatory and legal position.
News Deserts Leave Voters Vulnerable to Election Misinformation
A Fading Local News Ecosystem An estimated 50 million Americans live in counties with either no local news source or just one, according to the 2025 Medill report. But that number may not capture the real scope of the local news void. Surviving local outlets are increasingly owned by a small number of national conglomerates, and they operate with fewer resources and less focus on locally specific stories.
An Intimate Numbers Game: Histories of Quantifying Pelvic Floor Strength
Rachel Louise Moran The Elvie Trainer promises to “take the guesswork out of your workout.” Alongside other devices like the Elitone and the Perifit, the Elvie is a muscle strengthening device. Its advertising could be for any exercise equipment, but in this case the copy is not promising perfect biceps or a taut tummy. Instead, it is designed to help bolster the pelvic floor. Targeted especially to postpartum and menopausal women,[1] the devices claim to modernize the Kegel.
An Intimate Numbers Game: Histories of Quantifying Pelvic Floor Strength
Rachel Louise Moran The Elvie Trainer promises to “take the guesswork out of your workout.” Alongside other devices like the Elitone and the Perifit, the Elvie is a muscle strengthening device. Its advertising could be for any exercise equipment, but in this case the copy is not promising perfect biceps or a taut tummy. Instead, it is designed to help bolster the pelvic floor. Targeted especially to postpartum and menopausal women,[1] the devices claim to modernize the Kegel.
Blue
A History of Postpartum Depression in America A powerful look at the changing cultural understanding of postpartum depression in America. “If you begin to feel at all depressed,” the famous pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock advised new mothers, “go to a movie, or to the beauty parlor, or to get yourself a new hat or dress.” Such was the medical expertise on postpartum depression in the postwar United States.
Vaccine Misinformation for Profit: Conspiratorial Wellness Influencers and the Monetization of Alternative Health
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2023 Audit Committee Transparency Barometer
Audit committees play a pivotal role in instilling trust in capital markets through their oversight of the financial reporting and audit process. In order for investors, regulators and other stakeholders to have that trust, they must be able to understand who the audit committees are and what they do to earn that trust. Disclosures in public proxy statements are a significant tool that audit committees have at their disposal.
Opinion: Past time to stop police ‘testilying’; culture of deception in U.S. courts must end
IN MARCH 2020, police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor when they invaded her home to search for an alleged drug dealer. The events that led to the innocent bystander’s death started with deception: Police officers made false statements to a judge to get the warrant. If not for those lies, Breonna Taylor might still be alive.
The culture of police deception in US legal system needs to end
Opinion OPINION: The culture of deception in US courts needs to end Support sound science and smart stories Help us make scientific knowledge accessible to all Donate today In March 2020, police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor when they invaded her home to search for an alleged drug dealer. The events that led to the innocent bystander’s death started with deception: Police officers made false statements to a judge to get the warrant.
It’s way past time to stop police ‘testilying’
In March 2020, police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor when they invaded her home to search for an alleged drug dealer. The events that led to the innocent bystander’s death started with deception: Police officers made false statements to a judge to get the warrant. If not for those lies, Breonna Taylor might still be alive.
The culture of police deception in US legal system needs to end
In March 2020, police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor when they invaded her home to search for an alleged drug dealer. The events that led to the innocent bystander’s death started with deception: Police officers made false statements to a judge to get the warrant. If not for those lies, Breonna Taylor might still be alive.
Why Prostitution is Not "Sex Work"
Since the 1970s, a tactical and politically driven agenda has been advanced to promote the global sex trade. This agenda has rested on the reframing of prostitution along two seemingly disparate lines, one being the promotion of prostitution as ordinary work, and the other being the promotion of prostituted people as a sexual minority.
Local information providers can cultivate curiosity to build community trust
Yearly polls from Gallup paint a dire picture of Americans’ trust in news media — last year's poll reported a near record low in media trust, with only 34% of respondents expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in news media. As a journalism and misinformation researcher, much of my work is around understanding this crisis of trust and its impact on everyday information-seeking.
Welcome Julie Swede: The new interim Director of SPACE
Welcome Julie Swede: The new interim Director of SPACE After more than a decade of outstanding service to SPACE International, its founder, Rachel Moran, is stepping down as Executive Director. As we bid farewell to Rachel and thank her for her extraordinary contributions, we welcome Julie Swede who will head SPACE Intl as Interim Director as of January 9th, 2023.
Misinformation or activism?: analyzing networked moral panic through an exploration of #SaveTheChildren
ABSTRACT Central to the growth and visibility of conspiracy theory QAnon is the #SaveTheChildren movement – a digital social movement aimed to bring awareness to and end child trafficking. This paper analyzes the #SaveTheChildren movement on image-sharing platform Instagram, where the hashtag (and related others) had to be shielded by the platform because of its association with QAnon.
How to Research Misinformation Online
Format Moran, R. E., & Koltai, K., (2022). How to Research Misinformation Online [How to Guide]. SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529609226 Moran, Rachel E., and Kolina Koltai. How to Research Misinformation Online. SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online, SAGE Publications, Ltd., 2022. How to Guide. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529609226. Moran, R. E. and Koltai, K., 2022. How to Research Misinformation Online. [How to Guide].
Designing Trust: Design Style, Political Ideology, and Trust in “Fake” News Websites
Abstract Assessments of the trustworthiness of news outlets necessarily implicate visual design. The design of the newspaper has been a hallmark of its credibility; a newspaper looks trustworthy. But the relationship between design and trust is more complicated in a digital era. Agents of mis- and dis-information produce “fake” news outlets that look trustworthy, appropriating the design qualities of credible news outlets.
Robots in the News and Newsrooms: Unpacking Meta-Journalistic Discourse on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism
Abstract As journalism has grappled with the potentials and boundaries of AI within the industry, journalists have produced plentiful articles detailing experimentation and potential consequences of AI-driven journalism (see, Peiser, 2019 2019, February 5. “The Rise of the Robot Reporter.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/business/media/artificial-intelligence-journalism-robots.html [Google Scholar]; GPT-33, 2020 GPT-3. 2020, September 8. “A robot wrote this entire article.
Addressing the root of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic
research-article XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for StudentsVolume 28Issue 2Winter 2021 https://doi.org/10.1145/3495259 Abstract As pressure continues to mount on social media platforms to address the spread of vaccine misinformation, we aim to look at solutions to the rise in vaccine hesitancy. But to truly address vaccine misinformation and hesitancy, we need to address the underlying issues with trust in large institutions and inequity in healthcare.
Anthropological translations: Strategy, content, audience
Translation is an intimate, daily, and often frustrating experience in my life and work. While English has begun to colonize my dreams, I still am not at home in it. I do research in a place I call home—Beirut. I write about my research mostly in English, but I conduct most of it in my mother tongue, Arabic. I also translate the historical practices, legal knowledge, and lived worlds I research to Beirutis and Lebanese unfamiliar with them.
Isolated Research, Mortuary Practices, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Conversation with Sohini Chattopadhyay
Sohini Chattopadhyay, a 2020 International Dissertation Research Fellowship grantee, is the IDRF office staff’s winning pick for the 2021 IDRF Photo Competition in the category of “Photo Essay.” In this interview, Chattopadhyay shares reflections on her photo essay “Company in a Season of Lonely Hearts,” which illustrates her experiences conducting research in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sohini Chattopadhyay is a PhD candidate in the history department at Columbia University.
Trust and Authenticity as Tools for Journalism and Partisan Disinformation
Scholars and practitioners of journalism tend to think about the “crisis of trust” in journalism as an issue of growing distrust. On the contrary, trust in news media is thriving, but it exists unequally and is often tied to a vision of authenticity, and a vision of journalism, that is far different than the journalism we require for a functioning democracy. In part this is due to changes in the source of trust in journalism—trust is no longer concretely tied to professionalized practice.
5 tips to cure boredom on a lonely long drive
Driving on your own can be pretty boring, especially driving long distances. Do you find yourself continuously checking the clock, praying that by some miracle another hour has passed, only to see it has only been a couple of minutes? All you want is some company, someone to save you from the boredom of being alone. Thankfully, nowadays we have platforms that can provide us with entertainment on the road, and there are many places we can benefit from to get through the drive.
Objects of journalism, revised: Rethinking materiality in journalism studies through emotion, culture and ‘unexpected objects’
Ahmed, S (2010) Happy objects. In: Gregg, M, Seigworth, GJ, Ahmed, S (eds.) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NJ: Duke University Press, pp.29–51. Google Scholar | Crossref Ananny, M, Crawford, K (2015) A liminal press: Situating news app designers within a field of networked news production. Digital Journalism 3(2): 192–208. Google Scholar Anderson, B (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on The Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Books.
The Wild West of Prostitution
The Wild West of Prostitution WEBINAR: JULY 9th 2020 WEBINAR: Thursday July 9th 2020 1pm New York | 6pm London | 7pm Cape Town REGISTER HERE ›› Calls to decriminalise the sex trade routinely fail to mention that this includes the full decriminalisation of pimps, brothel keepers and johns. In this webinar we’ll hear from four women with personal experience of both prostitution and frontline service support.
Subscribing to Transparency: Trust-Building Within Virtual Newsrooms on Slack
ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Online Collaborative Software (OCS), most notably the platform Slack, have become embedded in the infrastructure of modern newsrooms affording a flexible and innovative way for newsrooms to coordinate their workflows and communicate across geographical distance. More recently, several media outlets have experimented with how the platform can be opened up to their audiences in an effort to build community and provide transparency in their newsmaking.
Examining switching power: Mark Zuckerberg as a novel networked media mogul
This paper explores Mark Zuckerberg's attempts at ‘network switching’ (Arsenault & Castells, 2008a. Switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics: A sociological analysis. International Sociology, 23(4), 488–513) in order to examine the nature of power in the network society in an age of social media dominance.
Anybody's Game: The Future of Super Bowl Advertising
by Rachel Moran , February 2, 2010 Super Bowl commercials are the pinnacle of television advertising, the only spots that entice the audience as much as the main event. The best become pop-culture milestones. Apple's shattered Orwellian computer screen from 1984 still resonates. So does Nissan's turbocharged 300ZX, inflamed with its gleeful encouragement of street racing. Coca-Cola's 1980 ad with Mean Joe Green is so vital that Coke Zero spoofed it in 2009.
Openness and Authority in Pregnancy: Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves
I began reading Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos on my own due date, desperately trying to keep busy as I awaited my baby’s arrival. Lucy Knisley’s extremely honest and intensely readable graphic memoir about pregnancy and childbirth was not exactly a distraction, as the book recounts her own stories related to trying to conceive, suffering miscarriages, and finally having a traumatic childbirth experience, but it was certainly engaging.
Perspective | Why American policy is leaving millions hungry
A whopping 15.6 million American households experienced at least some food insecurity in 2016, meaning that more than 12 percent of the population did not always know when or how they would get their next meal. Despite this, Congress is debating making it even harder for the hungry to access government assistance. The House farm bill included revisions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s (SNAP) work requirements, adding more bureaucratic hurdles and decreasing available exemptions.
A Past Attendee’s Pre-Conference Checklist
Every fall, I look forward to attending FPA’s Annual Conference; Chicago will be my fourth in a row. The engaging presentations, panels and keynotes are unmatched in the industry, not to mention the high-caliber professional networking among both professionals and providers. Each year, there are a few things I do in preparation for the conference to ensure I maximize my experience.
The Inaccurate and Dangerous Premise of the GOP Farm Bill
Rachel Louise Moran, Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Texas, is the author of Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). The first printing of food stamps. Washington, D.C., April 20, 1939. As Congress debates the 2018 Farm Bill, a major priority for some Republicans has been changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often still called food stamps.
Hybridization and postzygotic isolation promote reinforcement of male mating preferences in a diverse group of fishes with traditional sex roles
Hybridization and postzygotic isolation promote reinforcement of male mating preferences in a diverse group of fishes with traditional sex roles Rachel L. Moran, Muchu Zhou, Julian M. Catchen, Rebecca C. Fuller bioRxiv 325498; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/325498
Change We Need? Why the Name of the President’s Fitness Council Matters
Rachel Louise Moran At the end of February, President Trump renamed the council that supports American physical fitness as the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition (PCSFN). This is not in and of itself a big deal. It is the fifth time the Council has changed names since its 1956 creation, and seemingly one of the least important changes. The new name literally only switches the order of words around, so that sports is now before fitness, rather than after it.
Women and men alike have an obligation to speak out against pornography
It is difficult to know where to begin to describe the toxicity of our current cultural reality. I suppose as good a place to start as any would be the aggressive and deliberate attempt by the pornographers to forcibly inject themselves into the mainstream. This shouldn’t surprise any of us, when we all know that forcible penetration is the core action that defines the act of rape, and that the pornographers, in all of their actions, are doing to women what the rapist does to the individual.
Find Success with a Study Group
Rachel F. Moran, CFP®, is a financial planner with RTD Financial. She currently serves as president of the FPA NexGen community. I first attended FPA’s NexGen Gathering, a grassroots conference geared specifically toward planners under age 36, in 2014. I was elated to find young planners—and a bunch of them—in the same room. It felt like an epiphany; I’d found my people.
The Value of Communication in the Client-Planner Relationship
Journal of Financial Planning: August 2017 Yuanshan Cheng, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of finance in the Department of Accounting, Finance, and Economics at Winthrop University. Chris Browning, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and the co-director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech University. Philip Gibson, Ph.D., CFP®, is an assistant professor of finance in the Department of Accounting, Finance, and Economics at Winthrop University.
Male-driven reinforcement and cascade reinforcement in darters
Male-driven reinforcement and cascade reinforcement in darters Rachel L. Moran, Rebecca C. Fuller bioRxiv 171231; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/171231
Robert Scheer: MLK Has Been Repackaged as an Innocuous, Benign Figure. He Wasn’t That at All (Audio) | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
In an episode of the radio show “This Is Happening,” Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer unpacks Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, an address inspired in part by a harrowing piece published in Ramparts Magazine while Scheer was editor of the publication.
Kushner! The Musical (Video) | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
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Blind Taste Test | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
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Washington’s Supreme Hypocrisy on Chemical Weapons and Civilian Deaths | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
The use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Army in Idlib is an atrocity and the pictures of dead children tug at the heart. But the outrage of American politicians inside the beltway about it draws on the myths of American exceptionalism and Alzheimer’s of the political memory. It is also very suspicious in that the loudest voices of sympathy are the ones closest to the US military industrial complex, which has been regretting the missed opportunity of a Syria War.
About 5 Grounds to Impeach Trump (Video) | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
By my count, there are now four grounds to impeach Donald Trump. The fifth appears to be on its way. First, in taking the oath of office, a president promises to “faithfully execute the laws & the constitution.” That’s Article II Section 2. But Trump is unfaithfully executing his duties as president by accusing his predecessor, president Obama, of undertaking an illegal and impeachable act, with absolutely no evidence to support the accusation.
50 Years Later, a King’s Speech Has Lessons for a President | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
On April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most powerful, controversial speeches of his life: “Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break the Silence.” The legendary orator and organizer, this young Nobel Peace laureate, laid out a bold condemnation of the U.S. war in Vietnam, encouraging collaboration between the civil-rights and the anti-war movements.
The Party Is Over | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
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An Activist Hails Law Criminalizing Purchase of Sex in Ireland | Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
On March 27, the Sexual Offences Act finally passed into Irish law. The activists involved in its passage, including myself, had pressed for this law for anything between six and ten years. It is difficult to describe how it feels to live in a country where the purchase of sexual consent has finally been outlawed. We activists are assumed to be jumping for joy, clinking wine glasses and smiling.
The sex was never, ever fun: My lessons in prostitution
Testimony of an erotic dancer: “Nobody—not myself, not the other women—enjoys being pawed, poked, prodded and fucked by men we wouldn’t give the time of day if we met them elsewhere.” I remember one evening, in the clinic where I used to drink coffee and collect condoms, a particular humorous remark made to a young prostitute by one of the older women. They were discussing an unexpected surge in trade the previous night and the younger woman mentioned how she’d gone home exhausted after it.
My lessons in prostitution: How I learned the myth of the high-class hooker
“[F]rom the perspective of a woman in prostitution or a woman who has been in prostitution—the distinctions other people make between whether the event took place in the Plaza Hotel or somewhere more inelegant are not the distinctions that matter. These are irreconcilable perceptions, with irreconcilable premises. Of course the circumstances must matter, you say. No, they do not, because we are talking about the use of the mouth, the vagina, and the rectum.
‘Sex is Not a Service’
“Paid For,” by Rachel Moran, is a distressing and even stomach-turning book. Moran was born into poverty in Dublin and raised by two severely mentally ill parents. She left foster care at age 14 and became homeless. A year later, in 1991, her 21-year old boyfriend suggested that she sell sex, which she knew would allow the two of them to afford food, a flat, and cigarettes. She then spent seven years working as a prostitute on the streets, as an escort who visited clients’ homes, and in brothels.
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