Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, disinformation and media manipulation. Donovan received her Ph.D in Philosophy from UC San Diego and is currently assistant Professor of Journalism & Emerging Media Studies at Boston University and founder of The Critical Internet Studies Institute, a non-profit that advocates for a public interest internet. Her latest book is MEME WARS: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, with Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg.

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 (1998-2009). 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. He is among the leading scholars in the world on misinformation. He is lead author of the paper in Science in 2014 that critiqued Google Flu Trends, which has emerged as an important piece in the use of big data to understand human behavior. He is lead author on the 2009 Science paper on computational social science, which has been described as the manifesto for the emerging field. His work on algorithmic auditing and online personalization has received wide media coverage. His online experimental work on deliberation garnered best paper of the year in the American Political Science Review. His research on exploration and exploitation has been highly cited within the literature on collective intelligence. He has been PI on more than $13m of grants from the NSF, ARL, ARO, IARPA, and other entities. Dr. Lazer has served in multiple leadership and editorial positions, including as a board member for the International Network of Social Network Analysts (INSNA), reviewing editor for Science, associate editor of Social Networks and Network Science, numerous other editorial boards and program committees.

Christi Showman Farrar is a Consultant at the Massachusetts Library System (MLS) where she sees herself as a “librarian’s librarian”, providing continuing education and support to MLS member libraries across the Commonwealth. Her professional interests cover a wide range of library topics, including user research (UX), information literacy, early literacy and reading development, outreach and programming, readers' advisory, and digital resources. She’s honed her teaching and presentation skills over the course of many years and has taught workshops on topics such as collection development, social media for public libraries, informational text and text complexity, and student research behavior. Prior to working at MLS, Christi worked as a children’s and teen librarian in Massachusetts public libraries for a decade, and was the Director of the School and Public Library division at a well-known local library vendor. Christi holds a Master’s degree in Language, Reading & Culture from the University of Arizona, as well as a Master’s degree in Library & Information Science from Simmons University. She is also a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Library Media Studies graduate program at Salem State University.