Rebekah Larsen

What do you research?

My research focuses on 1) a 2010s definitional controversy implicating privacy and search engine responsibilities; 2) social media platforms and journalistic actors’ joint negotiation (and defining) of online disinformation; and 3) contemporary impacts on media flows (including disinformation) in environments with significant rural, religious, and broadcast media elements. Scholarly sites of inquiry range from search engine manipulation of journalists and activists around controversial 2010s privacy regulation; to the new global network of fact checkers funded by content moderation contracts; to conservative talk radio stations in rural Utah.

Why is it so important?

My research is centered on investigating understudied media environments, particularly those allowing insight into contemporary press and disinformation developments. I pay special attention to sociotechnical change, reproduction of discourse, and power relations within these systems. Sitting at the intersection of cultural studies, media sociology, and STS (Science, Technology, and Society), my work also investigates sociotechnical, cultural, and political dynamics of new media technologies.

A project you are proud of?

The Right to be Forgotten Decade: Definitional Battles & Platform Power is my first book. This book illustrates how there is lasting power in defining, and the exercise of this power is a multi-sited and complicated thing—especially in the context of changing media technologies. This book draws from mapping of thousands of online sources, and interviews within newsrooms, activist circles, and platforms across three continents. It recounts how the right to be forgotten was variously defined in each of these arenas: a kiss of death to journalistic autonomy, a ray of hope for revenge porn victims, the latest in colonial incursions in Latin America, and an attack on sovereignty and innovation.

Updated October 2024

Through her participation in Policy Fellowship 2024-2025, Rebekah will be working with Johan Wogensen Bach, team leader in International Media Support.