February 3, Studying Online Radicalization and Disinformation with Alice Marwick and Bruce Mutsvairo.

Please join the Rutgers Digital Ethnography Working Group (DEWG) for our upcoming panel, Studying Online Radicalization and Disinformation with Alice Marwick and Bruce Mutsvairo.

In recent years, digital platforms have proven themselves to be fertile ground for the spread of political disinformation, propaganda, and radicalization, particularly on the far right. Ethnographic work promises to shed valuable light on how these processes unfold over time and in diverse sociopolitical contexts. This panel will explore how digital ethnography can contribute to the burgeoning area of critical disinformation studies, and will consider key methodological concerns related to research design, ethics, and safety. 

This event will be moderated by Caitlin Petre (Rutgers University), member of the DEWG steering committee. 

Alice E. Marwick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and a Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She researches the social, political, and cultural implications of social media technologies, and is currently focused on disinformation, conspiracy theories, networked harassment, and identity. Marwick is the author of The Private is Political: Networked Privacy on Social Media (Yale 2023), Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online (Data & Society 2017), Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age (Yale 2013), and co-editor of The Sage Handbook of Social Media (2017). As an Andrew Carnegie fellow, she is working on her third book, Down the Rabbit Hole: The Intellectual Journeys of Violent Racists, Conspiracy Theorists, Flat Earthers, and Other Americans on the Fringe, about online radicalization.

Bruce Mutsvairo is Professor in the Department of Media and Culture studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, studying the development of journalism and media in non-Western societies. A former journalist with the Associated Press, he has published numerous scholarly books. Three more are forthcoming, including a student textbook on political communication in the platform era, co-authored with Daniel Kreiss and Ulrike Klinger (Polity, 2023). He co-edits the Palgrave/IAMCR book series Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research and the Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South, which he founded. Mutsvairo serves on the editorial board of the following journals: Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Digital Journalism, Communication Monographs, African Journalism Studies, Journal of Socialtechnical Critique, Journal of African Media Studies, Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies, among several others. Between 2020-22, he guest-edited four special issues in Digital Journalism, Media Culture and Society, Information, Communication and Society and Journalism and Mass Communication Education. 

Please join the Rutgers Digital Ethnography Working Group (DEWG) for our upcoming panel, Studying Online Radicalization and Disinformation with Alice Marwick and Bruce Mutsvairo.

In recent years, digital platforms have proven themselves to be fertile ground for the spread of political disinformation, propaganda, and radicalization, particularly on the far right. Ethnographic work promises to shed valuable light on how these processes unfold over time and in diverse sociopolitical contexts. This panel will explore how digital ethnography can contribute to the burgeoning area of critical disinformation studies, and will consider key methodological concerns related to research design, ethics, and safety. 

This event will be moderated by Caitlin Petre (Rutgers University), member of the DEWG steering committee. 

Alice E. Marwick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and a Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She researches the social, political, and cultural implications of social media technologies, and is currently focused on disinformation, conspiracy theories, networked harassment, and identity. Marwick is the author of The Private is Political: Networked Privacy on Social Media (Yale 2023), Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online (Data & Society 2017), Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age (Yale 2013), and co-editor of The Sage Handbook of Social Media (2017). As an Andrew Carnegie fellow, she is working on her third book, Down the Rabbit Hole: The Intellectual Journeys of Violent Racists, Conspiracy Theorists, Flat Earthers, and Other Americans on the Fringe, about online radicalization.

Bruce Mutsvairo is Professor in the Department of Media and Culture studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, studying the development of journalism and media in non-Western societies. A former journalist with the Associated Press, he has published numerous scholarly books. Three more are forthcoming, including a student textbook on political communication in the platform era, co-authored with Daniel Kreiss and Ulrike Klinger (Polity, 2023). He co-edits the Palgrave/IAMCR book series Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research and the Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South, which he founded. Mutsvairo serves on the editorial board of the following journals: Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Digital Journalism, Communication Monographs, African Journalism Studies, Journal of Socialtechnical Critique, Journal of African Media Studies, Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies, among several others. Between 2020-22, he guest-edited four special issues in Digital Journalism, Media Culture and Society, Information, Communication and Society and Journalism and Mass Communication Education. 

Virtual