The role of algorithms in promoting disinformation has received a great deal of attention in recent years, due in large part to the centrality of Facebook in the 2016 US presidential election and the UK Brexit campaign. However, David Nemer argues that in countries such as Brazil, where peer-to-peer messaging apps like WhatsApp are popular, more attention needs to be paid to the "human infrastructure" of coordinated disinformation campaigns.
David Nemer
David Nemer is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. His research and teaching interests cover the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Anthropology of Technology, ICT for Development (ICT4D), and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Nemer is an ethnographer whose fieldworks include the slums of Vitória, Brazil; Havana, Cuba; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Eastern Kentucky. Nemer is the author of Technology of the Oppressed (MIT Press, forthcoming) and Favela Digital: The Other Side of Technology (Editora GSA, 2013). He holds a PhD in computing, culture, and society from Indiana University. Nemer has written for the Guardian, El País, the HuffPost, Salon, and the Intercept.