Dr Aliaksandr Herasimenka

Profile

Aliaksandr is a political communication scholar and a postdoctoral researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project. His work investigates how political organisations and authoritarian governments use social media to manipulate public opinion. He is part of the Oxford Martin Programme on Misinformation, Science and Media, as well as the Alternative News Networks project.

Aliaksandr’s research interests include political communication, computational methods, social movements and political disinformation on messaging platforms.

Aliaksandr completed his doctorate at the Westminster School of Media and Communication, University of Westminster. His dissertation investigated how digital dissidents in Belarus and Russia used social media platforms to organise and disseminate information. This work analysed how they build ad hoc, segmented and shadowed organisational configurations and deploy vast digital communication infrastructures to address surveillance and censorship. The dissertation challenged the idea that authoritarian regimes have neared full co-optation of the internet.

Before pursuing his doctorate, Aliaksandr received a Master of Arts in European Studies from Aarhus University (Denmark). He also holds degrees in Political Science and Computer Science. Aliaksandr worked as a journalist and an editor, as well as a media coordinator in an international NGO. He also held teaching positions at UCL, University of Portsmouth, University of Westminster and Middlesex University, and worked as a research associate at University of Westminster.

Research Interests:

political communication, computational methods, digital media, social movements, political disinformation, messaging platforms.

Position held at OII:

• Postdoctoral Researcher, April 2020 –