Dr Mona Elswah is a Research Associate at Oxford Internet Institute and a Project Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), examining content moderation in the Global South. Prior to this, Mona was a Research Fellow in Human Rights and Technology at Harvard University’s Carr Center. Dr. Elswah also teaches at the Faculty of Mass Communication at Cairo University in Egypt. Mona writes on the intersection between digital media, Internet governance, online activism, and content moderation. She was a core member of the Democracy and Technology program (previously known as the Computational Propaganda project) at the Oxford Internet Institute from 2017-2022, where she examined junk news, algorithmic auditing, and platform governance in non-Western contexts.
Mona was awarded a PhD from the Oxford Internet Institute in 2023. In her PhD thesis, she examined the impact of digital repression on social movements’ online tactics, focusing on Syria and Tunisia as case studies. Her work has been featured in several international media outlets, and she has presented her work at different conferences and events. Mona has a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication and a Post-graduate Diploma in Public Policy from the American University in Cairo.
Political communication, disinformation, social movements, digital media, social media, and Internet governance
This project seeks to understand the health of the UK online information ecosystem, including tracking the spread of divisive and misleading content.
12 October 2020
28 September 2020
New analysis from researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, shows how internal processes at RT contribute to the anti-West news agenda and its critical representation of Western government across all RT languages.
5 August 2020
29 June 2020
News stories on coronavirus in French, German, and Spanish languages are being published by state-backed outlets from China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey.
The Atlantic, 28 March 2022
The Russia-funded news network staffed by American journalists shut down this month. What was it even trying to do?
ITV News, 05 September 2021
As governments across the world have had to grapple with the Taliban's swift takeover of Afghanistan, so too have social media companies.
Wired, 11 August 2021
The platform has been accused of failing to prevent the spread of disinformation. Could its new integrity procedures be a sign of change? frontpage-press|Programme on Democracy and TechnologyWiredMona Elswah
