Dr. Joan Donovan
On April 19th, 2021, The Media Literacy and Democracy Project hosted it's inaugural speaker, Dr. Joan Donovan. Dr. Donovan is the Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she leads the Technology and Social Change Project. Dr. Donovan specializes in media manipulation and disinformation campaigns, as well as online extremism and adversarial media movements. She is the creator of the Media Manipulation Casebook, an online platform for research into media manipulation and disinformation campaigns, as well the author of the Meme War Weekly newsletter, and the host of the Big, If True webinar series.
Her lecture covered misinformation and disinformation in our media ecosystem, the role of political and media elites in disinformation campaigns both online and offline, the origin and spread of conspiracy theories, and the impact of media manipulation campaigns on American Democracy.
What is Media Manipulation?
The True Costs of Misinformation: Producing Moral and Technical Order in a Time of Pandemonium
Research Reports
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Space Invaders: The Networked Terrain of Zoom Bombing
Donovan and fellow authors Brian Friedberg and Gabrielle Lim produced this report on "Zoom-Bombing" as a disruptive tactic, the motivations behind it, and the features of our networked information system that make it possible. -
The Deplatforming Index: A Research Brief
Following the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute's report on the social media disinformation campaign around the 2020 presidential election, several social media companies banned prominent purveyors of false election fraud claims from their platforms. Donovan and coauthor Dwight Knell have created this index to keep track of which media influencers have been banned from which platforms. The research brief for this project is available here, but the updated index is on Media Manipulation Casebook's website. -
The Digital Influence Machine
This report, issued by Donovan, Anthony Nadler, and Mathew Crain, describes a set of technologies, systems, and strategies for influencing opinion online that the authors dub the "Digital Influence Machine." They explain how the DIM can be used to target vulnerable points in our democracy.
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Big, If True Webinar Series
Donovan hosts this webinar series on issues related to media manipulation, disinformation, and democracy that have arisen during the Covid-19 pandemic. -
Meme War Weekly
Donovan's online newsletter examines trends in online political media, chiefly - you guessed it - memes.
