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Joan DonovanThe True Costs of Misinformation: Producing Moral and Technical Order in a Time of Pandemonium
Wednesday, October 21, 2020, 5:00–6:30pm
It all feels like a pre-cursor to a bad joke: What do foreign agents, white supremacists, conspiracists, snake oil salesmen, political operatives, white academics, and a disgruntled bunch of zoomers have in common? The groups have collided in a centrifuge of chaos online, where the tactics they use to hide their identities and manipulate audiences are more prevalent than ever. Social media companies are trying to patch the holes in a failing sociotechnical systems, where the problems their products have created are now shouldered by journalists, universities, and health professionals, just to name a few. What can be done to restore moral and technical order in a time of pandemonium?
Joan Donovan is Director of the Technology and Social Change (TaSC) Research Project at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns. Dr. Donovan’s research and teaching interests are focused on media manipulation, effects of disinformation campaigns, and adversarial media movements.
Her research can be found in academic peer-reviewed journals such as Social Media + Society, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (JCE), Information, Communication & Society, Social Studies of Science, and Online Information Review. Her contributions can also be found in the books Data Science Landscape: Towards Research Standards and Protocols and Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives. Dr. Donovan received her Ph.D. in Sociology and Science Studies from the University of California San Diego, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, where she studied white supremacists’ use of DNA ancestry tests, social movements, and technology.
This event is free and open to the public; registration is required. Please email us if you require any accommodations to enable your full participation.
