Episode 37: “Somewhere Between a Library and a Tabloid:” The Internet, Disinformation Campaigns, and the Weaponization of Memes

In this episode, host Shawn Rostker talks to Dr. Joan Donovan, Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Dr. Donovan specializes in disinformation and media politics. Shawn and Dr. Donovan discuss current social media and the effects of disinformation campaigns in recent history. They also dive into the concept of memetic warfare to better understand how political movements compete and battle in the online world. 

About the Guest

Joan Donovan is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies, focusing on media manipulation, sociology of knowledge and expertise, and networked social movements. She coauthored a book called, Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, which analyzes how meme culture became an important political communication strategy bridging social movements with contemporary political parties from Occupy to the insurrection.

Dr. Donovan’s academic research can be found in academic peer-reviewed journals such as Social Studies of Science, Social Media + Society, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Information, Communication & Society, 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’s public scholarship has been showcased in a wide array of media mainstream outlets, including MIT Technology Review, NPR, Washington Post, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and more.

Formerly, Dr. Donovan was the Research Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy, where I directed the Technology and Social Change Research Project. Our team researched media manipulation, disinformation, and adversarial media movements. She was previously the Research Lead for Data & Society’s Media Manipulation Initiative, which mapped how interest groups, governments, political operatives, corporations, and others use the internet and media to disrupt social institutions.

Dr. Donovan completed my PhD in Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego in 2015, 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.

Views expressed are personal and do not represent the views of GSSR or any other entity.