Joan Donovan | |
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![]() Donovan in 2023 | |
Born | 1979or1980(age 44–45) [1] |
Nationality | American |
Education | University of California, San Diego University of California, Los Angeles |
Occupation(s) | Sociologist Assistant Professor, College of Communication, Boston University |
Employer(s) | Harvard University Boston University |
Known for | Disinformation expert |
Joan Donovan (born 1979/1980) is an American social science researcher, sociologist, and academic noted for her research on disinformation. She is the founder of the nonprofit, The Critical Internet Studies Institute (CISI). Since 2023, she is an assistant professor at the College of Communication at Boston University. [2]
Prior to that, Donovan was a researcher and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. She was also an affiliate at Data and Society, and was research director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. [3] [1]
Donovan earned her Ph.D. in sociology and science studies from the University of California, San Diego. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Society and Genetics at University of California, Los Angeles where her expertise was social movements, technology, and the use of DNA ancestry tests by white supremacists. [4] [5]
She later held the role of research lead for the Media Manipulation Initiative at Data and Society, an independent nonprofit research institute, that mapped how interest groups, governments, political operatives, corporations, and others use the internet and media to disrupt social institutions. [6]
After Data and Society, Donovan went on to Harvard Kennedy School, leading its Technology and Social Change Research Project and teaching a class entitled, Media Manipulation and Disinformation Campaigns. [7]
In September 2023, she was hired as a tenure-tracking faculty member by the Boston University College of Communication and given the title of assistant professor. [2]
Donovan's expertise is in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns. In January 2020, she testified at the "Americans at Risk: Manipulation and Deception in the Digital Age" hearing held by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce. [8]
As research director of the Harvard project, she published a number of impactful research papers and books. Donovan co-authored a widely-read study that demonstrated that a significant number of participants in the January 6 attack on the Capitol were driven by their support for Donald Trump.
In September 2021, Donovan released a book entitled, Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, with co-authors Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg. The book explores the spread of right-wing political conspiracy theories through online media.
In 2022, Harvard announced that her research project there would end in 2024. [9] Due to announcement of the closing of the project, she accepted a faculty position at Boston University. The Harvard project ended in August 2023, [2] and Donovan began her work at Boston University in September.
On January 5, 2024, The Conversation published Jan. 6 was an example of networked incitement − a media and disinformation expert explains the danger of political violence orchestrated over social media by Donovan following research into the weaponization of social media that influenced the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 2020 and compared its dynamics to events in previous decades. [10]
In December 2023, Donovan alleged that she was forced to leave Harvard due to pressure from Meta Platforms owing to her research on online extremism. [11] [12] In a legal filing sent to both the Massachusetts Attorney General's office as well as the federal United States Department of Education, Donovan alleged that financial pressure from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative led to her being pushed out of Harvard. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative denied involvement in her departure from the university. [13] [14] Harvard also disputed Donovan's accusation, asserting that they did not "fire" her; that they were unable to find a faculty member who would oversee her work (although being director of the research project, she was not employed as "faculty"); and that they offered her an alternate position, which she turned down. [12]
Donovan has authored more than 35 articles, papers, and books [15] including:
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic deceptions and media manipulation tactics to advance political, military, or commercial goals. Disinformation is implemented through attacks that "weaponize multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value judgements—to exploit and amplify culture wars and other identity-driven controversies."
Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation can exist without specific malicious intent; disinformation is distinct in that it is deliberately deceptive and propagated. Misinformation can include inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or false information as well as selective or half-truths.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American businessman. He co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a political advocacy organization founded in 2006 by Sasha Havlicek and George Weidenfeld and headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Priscilla Chan is an American philanthropist and a former pediatrician. She and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in December 2015, with a pledge to transfer 99 percent of their Facebook shares, then valued at $45 billion. She attended Harvard University and received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco.
Occupy Democrats is an American left-wing media outlet built around a Facebook page and corresponding website. Established in 2012, it publishes hyperpartisan content, clickbait, and false information. Posts originating from the Occupy Democrats Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
Donna Zuckerberg is an American classicist, feminist, and writer. She is author of the book Not All Dead White Men (2018), about the appropriation of classics by misogynist groups on the Internet. She was editor-in-chief of Eidolon, a classics journal, until its closure in 2020. She is a sister of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
First Draft News was a project "to fight mis- and disinformation online" founded in 2015 by nine organizations brought together by the Google News Lab. It included Facebook, Twitter, the Open Society Foundations and several philanthropic organizations. In June 2022, First Draft announced it would be shutting down, with its mission continuing at the Information Futures Lab.
Fake news in India refers to fostering and spread of false information in the country which is spread through word of mouth, traditional media and more recently through digital forms of communication such as edited videos, websites, blogs, memes, unverified advertisements and social media propagated rumours. Fake news spread through social media in the country has become a serious problem, with the potential of it resulting in mob violence, as was the case where at least 20 people were killed in 2018 as a result of misinformation circulated on social media.
Disinformation attacks are strategic deception campaigns involving media manipulation and internet manipulation, to disseminate misleading information, aiming to confuse, paralyze, and polarize an audience. Disinformation can be considered an attack when it occurs as an adversarial narrative campaign that weaponizes multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value-laden judgements—to exploit and amplify identity-driven controversies. Disinformation attacks use media manipulation to target broadcast media like state-sponsored TV channels and radios. Due to the increasing use of internet manipulation on social media, they can be considered a cyber threat. Digital tools such as bots, algorithms, and AI technology, along with human agents including influencers, spread and amplify disinformation to micro-target populations on online platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Google, Facebook, and YouTube.
Alice E. Marwick is a communication scholar, academic, and author, who currently works as an Associate Professor in the Communication department and Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an affiliated researcher with the Data and Society Research Institute. Marwick has written for publications such as the New York Times, and the Guardian. Her works include the examination of politics, race, social media and gender. She has been a keynote speaker for various universities throughout the United States.
Abbie Richards is a misinformation educator and environmental activist whose conspiracy theory charts went viral on Twitter in 2020 and 2021. Richards was included on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2023, in the category of Consumer Technology.
Frances Haugen is an American product manager, data engineer, scientist, and whistleblower. She disclosed tens of thousands of Facebook's internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal in 2021.
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This timeline includes entries on the spread of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. This includes investigations into the origin of COVID-19, and the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 which is caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. Social media apps and platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube, have contributed to the spread of misinformation. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) reported that conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 began on "day one". CAHN reported on March 16, 2020, that far-right groups in Canada were taking advantage of the climate of anxiety and fear surrounding COVID, to recycle variations of conspiracies from the 1990s, that people had shared over shortwave radio. COVID-19 disinformation is intentional and seeks to create uncertainty and confusion. But most of the misinformation is shared online unintentionally by enthusiastic participants who are politically active.
Nina Jankowicz is an American researcher and writer. She is the author of How to Lose the Information War (2020), on Russian use of disinformation as geopolitical strategy, and How to Be a Woman Online (2022), a handbook for fighting against online harassment of women. She briefly served as executive director of the newly created United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s Disinformation Governance Board, resigning from the position amid the dissolution of the board by DHS in May 2022.
Renée DiResta is a writer and former research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). DiResta has written about pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. She has also served as an advisor to the U.S. Congress on ongoing efforts to prevent online and social media disinformation.
Julia Carrie Wong is a journalist primarily reporting on labor, tech and extremism, currently for The Guardian. Her reporting on Facebook and its involvement in disinformation and misinformation campaigns that artificially promoted candidates in Azerbaijan and Honduras has raised awareness of Facebook's content management controversies, as has her reporting on the company's similar failure to act on white supremacist groups on Facebook.
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