Browsing Disinformation

Julia Angwin

Julia Angwin is Editor-in-Chief and Founder of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that produces meaningful data-centered journalism about technology and the people affected by it.

Before founding The Markup, she led investigative teams at ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance,” (Times Books, 2014) and “Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America” (Random House, March 2009). She has a B.A. in mathematics from The University of Chicago and an MBA from Columbia University.

She is a winner and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

Laura Edelson

Laura Edelson is a PhD Candidate in Computer Science at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. Laura studies online political communication and develops methods to identify inauthentic content and activity. Her research has powered reporting on social media ad spending in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic. Prior to her current time in academia, Laura was a software engineer for Palantir and Factset. During her time in industry, her work focused on applied machine learning and big data.

Deen Freelon

Deen Freelon is an associate professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies political uses of social media and other digital technologies. He is also a principal researcher for UNC’s interdisciplinary Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP). He has authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles, book chapters and public reports, in addition to co-editing one scholarly book. An expert in multiple programming languages including R, Python, and PHP, Freelon has written research-grade software applications for a range of computational research purposes. He formerly taught at American University in Washington, D.C.

David Lazer

David Lazer is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, and Co-Director, NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks. Prior to coming to Northeastern University, he was on the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School. In 2019, he was elected a fellow to the National Academy of Public Administration. His research has been published in such journals as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the American Political Science Review, Organization Science, and the Administrative Science Quarterly, and has received extensive coverage in the media, including the New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS Evening News.

Rebecca Weiss

Rebecca leads data innovation projects at Mozilla.  Previously, she built and led the Data Science team, which was focused on generating insights into the state of the browser and the Web at large.  She was also the lead Data Steward of Firefox, where she worked on standards for data collection in the browser. Previously, she was a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society as well as the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. She holds a PhD from Stanford, a SM in Technology Policy from MIT, and a BA in Cognitive Systems from the University of British Columbia. She also knows a surprising amount about comic books and video games.

Ethan Zuckerman

Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of public policy, information and communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and director of the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure. His research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, the use of new media technologies by activists and alternative business and governance models for the internet. He is the author of Mistrust: How Losing Trust in Institutions Provides Tools to Transform Them (2020) and Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (2013). With Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded the international blogging community Global Voices. It showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages, publishing editions in 20 languages. Previously, Zuckerman directed the Center for Civic Media at MIT and taught at the MIT Media Lab. In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer organization that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously, he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web’s first “personal publishing” sites. He and his family live in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts.