Editor's note: Donovan's lecture is now available at this link.
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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Joan Donovan, research director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, will present "Doing It for the Content: Understanding Political Violence and Far Right Organizing from Fashion to Fascism" at 6 p.m. Oct. 18 in Freeman Auditorium in the HUB-Robeson Center on Penn State's University Park campus. The event also will be livestreamed here.
The talk will shine a light on political violence and the agitation tactics used by far-right groups to shape media narratives and provoke a response in the press and on social media that will amplify their cause.
Donovan, who is the director of the Technology and Social Change Project, authored “Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America.” Her talk will share insights into the communication, media and other strategies of groups like the Proud Boys. While at Penn State, she will also be meeting with faculty, staff and students throughout the day for smaller discussions.
Donovan is a leading public scholar and disinformation researcher, specializing in media manipulation, political movements, critical internet studies and online extremism. Through the Technology and Social Change Project, Donovan explores how media manipulation is a means to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. The Technology and Social Change Project conducts research, develops methods and facilitates workshops for journalists, policymakers, technologists and civil society organizations on how to detect, document and debunk media manipulation campaigns.
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 U.S. got to this point.
The lecture is sponsored by Penn State Student Affairs and the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications.