In this session, Dr. Joan Donovan demonstrates a case study approach to mapping the life cycle of media manipulation campaigns. This method seeks to analyze the order, scale and scope of manipulation campaigns by following media artifacts through space and time, drawing together multiple relationships to sort through the tangled mess.

Dr. Donovan will draw on an overview of the life cycle of a media manipulation campaign, which is useful for researchers and journalists as they attempt to identify, track and expose media manipulation and disinformation. The life cycle has five points of action, where the tactics of media manipulators can be documented using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Dr. Joan Donovan is the Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns. Dr. Donovan leads The Technology and Social Change Project (TaSC). TaSC explores how media manipulation is a means to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. TaSC conducts research, develops methods, and facilitates workshops for journalists, policy makers, technologists, and civil society organizations on how to detect, document, and debunk media manipulation campaigns.

This event was organised as part of the Digital Social Science Research Cluster at CDCS.

First Broadcast on 25 January, 2021.