'Meme Wars' with Joan Donovan & Brandie Nonnecke

Hear from Dr. Joan Donovan, an expert in media manipulation, political movements, critical internet studies, and online extremism.

While memes are often dismissed as having little to no political importance, they have become bedrock to the strategy of conspiracists and extremists. Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America tells the story of how “Stop the Steal” went from online to real life. Dr. Joan Donovan, an expert in media manipulation, political movements, critical internet studies, and online extremism, shares an overview of how memes are weaponized to push disinformation and deepen partisanship in the United States.

Sponsored by the Tech Policy Initiative, a joint program of the Goldman School of Public Policy and the CITRIS Policy Lab with support from the UC Berkeley AI Policy Hub, Berkeley Law, Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, Center for Security in Politics, and the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab.

Dr. Donovan is is co-author of the book Meme Wars, The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, and a leading public scholar and disinformation researcher, specializing in media manipulation, political movements, critical internet studies, and online extremism. She is the Research Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Director of the Technology and Social Change project (TaSC). Through TaSC, Dr. Donovan 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. Her research can be found in academic peer-reviewed journals such as Social Media + Society, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Information, Communication & Society, and Social Studies of Science.

Donovan is also a columnist at MIT Technology Review, a regular contributor to the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and PBS, and is quoted often on radio and in print. Dr. Donovan has laid out the philosophical frameworks for how to research, report on, and understand this moment in internet history and American politics. Her conceptualizations of strategic silence, meme wars, and media manipulation campaigns provide crucial frameworks for understanding how the US got to this point. She coined many of the terms that the disinformation research field and mainstream media use to understand technology's impact on society.

Dr. Donovan is also the co-creator of the beaver emoji. 🦫