About the lecture

With the prevalence of disinformation geared to instill doubt rather than clarity, Creating Chaos Online unmasks disinformation when it attempts to pass as deliberation in the public sphere and distorts the democratic processes. This talk focuses on the following aspects on how to address disinformation by focusing on a specific case study of Russian trolling: first, it covers sociopolitical contexts in which Russian trolling emerged. Second, it uncovers its interpretative manifestations online through repeated tropes of justifications. Third, it details how Russian trolling justifications tapped onto post-truth to circulate the recurrent tropes across not only all analyzed media platforms’ comments but also across two analyzed sociopolitical contexts suggesting the orchestrated efforts behind messaging and its effects to publics conceptualized in the talk as post-publics.    

Finally, the talk focuses on sociotechnical practices specific to analyzed online spaces. It examines cross-platform social media content. It also captures sociopolitical specificity of Russian trolling as a phenomenon: by tracing user-generated content not only in the left-leaning media contexts but also by including US far-right media ecosystems. The third one includes cross-validation of content across national cases. Finally, the talk provides a social literacy toolkit to make sense of the complex content circulation online.   

About the speaker

Dr. Zelenkauskaite is an associate professor at Drexel University. Her research focuses on emergent practices in online spaces that are traceable through digital meta data and discourses. Her work encompasses computational social science approaches by employing interdisciplinary perspectives that intersect information science, discourse studies, and communication.