Online Disinformation Campaigns
Channel: EFF-Austin
Date: 2021-02-07

Our speaker this month is Dr. Sharon Strover. Dr. Strover is the Philip G. Warner Regents Professor in Communication and former Chair of the Radio-TV-Film Department at the University of Texas, where she teaches communications and technology courses and directs the Technology and Information Policy Institute. Some of her current research projects examine local and statewide networks and broadband services; the relationship between economic outcomes and the Internet; misinformation; the digital divide; and rural broadband deployment. In 2010 she stepped down from her eight-year stint chairing the RTF Department in order to work on the USDA’s Broadband Initiatives Program in Washington D.C., after which she returned to the University of Texas. She has worked with several international, national and regional government agencies on communications policy matters, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, FCC, the government of Portugal, the Center for Rural Strategies, the European Union, The Appalachian Regional Commission, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Rural Policy Institute, the Ford Foundation, the European Union, the Texas Public Utility Commission, the Department of Information Resources and Department of Health and Human Services, and the Benton Foundation.

Disinformation has mushroomed in the U.S. around a variety of subjects and from a variety of sources. Sharon’s research group at TIPI has looked over some of the Russian-placed, social media disinformation and investigated the possible tactics that undergird it. They also have been analyzing why some people in the U.S. responded to propaganda messages as well as how the press has dealt with those same messages. She’ll share those results and talk a little bit about other research at UT on disinformation.

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