{"id":649,"date":"2024-10-25T16:56:32","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T20:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/?page_id=649"},"modified":"2024-10-28T14:50:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T18:50:39","slug":"truth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/compassion\/truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Battling Misinformation, Protecting Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The truth matters, it always will, and Boston University added new voices last year that will make this powerfully clear.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The College of Communication welcomed media scholar Maria Elizabeth Grabe<\/strong><\/a> as its inaugural Dalton Family Professor<\/a> and second-ever director of Emerging Media Studies. She joins Joan Donovan<\/strong><\/a>, one of the foremost experts in online misinformation and disinformation<\/a>, who was hired by the College of Communication as an assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies.<\/p>\n

Grabe built her journalism career in South Africa where she regularly bucked up against government censorship. \u201cI cannot think of a more acute threat to the democratic way of life than doubt about the integrity of information that flows through media platforms,\u201d says Grabe, who is an International Communication Association Fellow as well as a former editor of the journal Communication Theory<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Media studies researchers Maria Elizabeth Grabe<\/strong> and Joan Donovan<\/strong> are leading experts in emerging media and communication.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donovan\u2019s research and teaching explore media manipulation, effects of disinformation campaigns, and adversarial media movements, with a particular focus on how political parties, governments, corporations, social movements, and other networked groups engage in efforts to shape media narratives and disrupt social institutions. She has testified before Congress about manipulation and deception online and is a coauthor of Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can feel a little like trying to hold back a tidal wave with your own two hands,\u201d says Donovan, who is on the faculty of BU\u2019s Communication Research Center<\/strong><\/a>. But that hasn\u2019t stopped her yet. She places herself at the crossroads of a dark web of online vitriol, exploring cynical\u2014and sometimes violent\u2014posts by extremists and conspiracy theorists, often picking up on nascent movements and bad actors before they gain mainstream attention.<\/p>\n

One of her priority initiatives at BU is to build out an internet observatory of everything nationally elected politicians post online.<\/p>\n

\u201cJournalists are more and more becoming the front lines of the information war,\u201d Donovan says. \u201cAnd my hope is to help them design and develop new digital methods for investigative journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The truth matters, it always will, and Boston University added new voices last year that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12906,"featured_media":0,"parent":94,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"bu-landing","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12906"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":713,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/649\/revisions\/713"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}