Workshop: DisInformation - Mapping the Lifecycle of Media Manipulation

In this session, Dr. Joan Donovan demonstrates a case study approach to mapping the life cycle of media manipulation campaigns. This method seeks to analyze the order, scale and scope of manipulation campaigns by following media artifacts through space and time, drawing together multiple relationships to sort through the tangled mess.

Dr. Donovan will draw on an overview of the life cycle of a media manipulation campaign, which is useful for researchers and journalists as they attempt to identify, track and expose media manipulation and disinformation. The life cycle has five points of action, where the tactics of media manipulators can be documented using qualitative and quantitative methods.

In this training, participants will learn to look for any one of these points of action and then trace the campaign backward and forward through the life cycle using the web tools such as tineye (a reverse image search) and web archives to hunt for disinformation. 

Dr. Joan Donovan is the Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns. Dr. Donovan leads The Technology and Social Change Project (TaSC). TaSC 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.

Event schedule

14.00 – Welcome and introduction

14.05 – Introduction to disinformation - short lecture

14.30 – Q&A

14.45 – Discussion on meme wars - short lecture

15.15 – Q&A

15.30 – Break

15.45 – Tools for low-tech disinformation detection and mapping - screenshare talk using tineye and web archives

16.45 – Q&A

17:00 – End