Political Pandemonium Workshop 3: Media Manipulation and the 2020 Election: Protecting Our Democracy
The Technology and Social Change Project’s (TaSC) Political Pandemonium 2020 is a series of four digital workshops exploring the harmful effects of media manipulation on our society. These gatherings each focus on a unique subtopic of interest to both the field of Critical Internet Studies and the broader public concerns about disinformation in elections.
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About the episode
Media Manipulation and the 2020 Election: Protecting Our Democracy, the third workshop in the series, featured a conversation between Dr. Joan Donovan, Research Director of the Shorenstein Center, Jacobo Licona, Disinformation Researcher for Equis Labs, Dr. Jonathan Metzl, Director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University, and Bridget Todd, Founder of Unbossed Creative.
This session focused on how media manipulation and disinformation is playing an active role in undermining American democracy and disrupting the 2020 presidential election. During the workshop, our speakers examined the following questions: how has social media come to play such a pivotal role in the election process? How can we address and combat manipulators’ efforts to suppress voter turnout? How do networked factions manipulate information for political gain?
Guest Speakers
Jacobo Licona is a disinformation researcher for Equis Labs, a research and experimentation hub identifying new ways to reach and engage Latino voters. Prior to working for Equis, Jacobo helped lead research efforts for two 2020 presidential campaigns and various campaign committees. He’s also provided research and communications support for progressive and Latinx organizations.
Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his MD from the University of Missouri, MA in humanities/poetics and psychiatric internship/residency from Stanford University, and PhD in American culture from University of Michigan. Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the 2020 APA Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship, and a 2008 Guggenheim fellowship, Dr. Metzl has written extensively for medical, psychiatric, and popular publications about some of the most urgent hot-button issues facing America and the world. His books include The Protest Psychosis, Prozac on the Couch, Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, and Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland.
Bridget Todd is the creator and host of iHeartRadio’s critically acclaimed podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet. She got her start teaching courses on writing and social change at Howard University. Since then, she’s trained human rights activists in Australia, coordinated digital strategy for organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Women’s March, and MSNBC, and ran a training program for political operatives that the Washington Post called the Democratic Party’s “Hogwarts for digital wizardry.” Formerly, she cohosted iHeartMedia’s Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast bringing feminist issues to 2 million ears a month and hosted a global salon with AFROPUNK where she talked to high-profile women like Ava Duvernay and #MeToo creator Tarana Burke.
Meet the Host
Joan Donovan, PhD
Research Director of The Shorenstein Center
Director of The Technology and Social Change Research Project
Affiliations: Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Data & Society, SSRC
Dr. Donovan’s research specializes in Critical Internet Studies, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and the Sociology of Social Movements. Dr. Donovan’s research and expertise has been showcased in a wide array of peer-reviewed journals and media outlets including NPR, Washington Post, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, ABC News, NBC News, Columbia Journalism Review, The Atlantic, Nature, and more.
The Technology and Social Change Research Project focuses on media manipulation, disinformation, political communication, and technology’s relationship to society. Our research explains how media manipulation is a means to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. The project 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. The project is creating a research platform called the Media Manipulation Case Book, which will include 100 case studies to advance our knowledge of how misinformation travels across the web and platforms.
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