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Joan Donovan

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]

Joan Donovan

1979 or 1980 (age 44–45)[1]

American

University of California, San Diego
University of California, Los Angeles

Sociologist
Assistant Professor, College of Communication, Boston University

Harvard University
Boston University

Disinformation expert

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]

Education[edit]

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]

How news organizations should cover white supremacist shootings, [16]

PBS NewsHour

Big Tech Companies Are Struggling With How To Best Police Their Platforms, [17]

NPR

Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives, Institute of Network Cultures

[18]

Navigating the Tech Stack: When, Where, and How Should we Moderate Content?, Centre for International Governance Innovation

[19]

Toward a Militant Ethnography of Infrastructure: Cybercartographies of Order, Scale, and Scope across the Occupy Movement, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

[20]

Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, Bloomsbury Publishing

[21]

Jan. 6 was an example of networked incitement − a media and disinformation expert explains the danger of political violence orchestrated over social media, [10]

The Conversation

Donovan has authored more than 35 articles, papers, and books[15] including:

Official website

Critical Internet Studies Institute

Data and Society