Professor Philip N. Howard is a social scientist with expertise in technology, public policy and international affairs. He is Director of Oxford University’s Programme on Democracy and Technology, a Statutory Professor at Balliol College, and he is affiliated with the Departments of Politics and Sociology. Currently, he is also a Visiting Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
Howard has published widely on technology and the global information ecology, across a range of disciplines, including engineering, information science, sociology, law, and public policy, drawing on his degrees in political science, economics, and sociology. He is among a small number of scholars who have won awards from all three major academic associations for his work in political science, sociology, and information science. His research applies a diverse mix of behavioral, computational and social research methods.
His award-winning, interdisciplinary research in the behavioral, engineering and social sciences has been funded with large grants from public science agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the European Research Council. His research appears in respected peer-reviewed journals, and books with prominent academic presses. He provides thought leadership on technology and public life through essays in outlets such as the Financial Times, New York Times, and Washington Post.
In recent years he has been building and managing large research teams and departments—including the Oxford Internet Institute—through organizational vision, fiduciary responsibility, and new revenue generating initiatives. He is a consultant to civil society groups, government, industry, and international institutions on contemporary technology and policy issues.
He is the author, most recently, of the prize-winning Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives (Yale University Press, 2020). The National Democratic Institute awarded him a “Democracy Prize” and Foreign Policy magazine named him a “Global Thinker” for pioneering the social science of the global information environment. His website is philhoward.org, and he tweets from @pnhoward.
Professor Howard is not currently taking OII students.
Science and technology studies, internet, society, politics
By Philip N. Howard
Harnessing information from polling data, internet postings, and interviews with journalists, bot writers, and political consultants, Howard offers a way to identify and derail "bot" technologies that jeopardize our discourse and democracies.
DemTech investigates the use of algorithms, automation, and computational propaganda in public life.
In this three-year programme researchers will examine the interplay between systematic misinformation campaigns, news coverage, and increasingly important social media platforms for public understanding of science and technological innovation.
This project builds on existing data science to understand the extent to which credible public health information is outweighed by false content on social media and measure the effectiveness of public health communication responses in real‐time.
In the past five years my work has been primarily supported by public science agencies in the European Union, United Kingdom, and United States. I have received philanthropic support from the Adessium Foundation, Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
As part of my science communication and policy outreach, I have served in an unpaid advisory capacity to governments and international agencies, including the Canadian Government, European Commission, the UK Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DCIT), UK House of Commons, UK House of Lords, US House, and US Senate. I have served in a paid advisory capacity to UNICEF and do strategic advising for public agencies through the Oxford University spin-off Pattrn.AI Analytics and Intelligence, which I co-founded.
I conduct my research in line with the Oxford University’s academic integrity code of practice.
By Marcel Schliebs, Hannah Bailey, Jonathan Bright, and Philip N. Howard
The Chinese state increasingly employs social media in its public diplomacy efforts. This report by Oxford researchers lays out the vast extent of China’s operations on Twitter, where it controls a huge number of highly active accounts.
13 December 2021
A new report from the Oxford Commission on AI and Good Governance (OxCAIGG), calls for collective action and greater public cooperation amongst policymakers and decision-makers responsible for AI in public services.
11 May 2021
A new study by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford uncovers a coordinated amplification network promoting the Twitter accounts of PRC diplomats based in the United Kingdom.
11 May 2021
A new study by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford uncovers a coordinated amplification network promoting the Twitter accounts of PRC diplomats based in the United Kingdom.
25 January 2021
Donations from friends, alumni, and supporters of the Oxford Internet Institute have now taken the total money raised for the Shirley Scholars Fund to £105,000.
The Economist, 03 May 2024
Researchers and governments need to co-ordinate; tech companies need to open up.
Financial Times, 11 January 2024
Experts fear 2024 could be the year a viral undetectable deepfake has a catastrophic impact on an election
New York Times, 25 May 2023
A group of scholars introduced an international panel to study the digital information landscape, inspired by those who had been warning of the effect of global warming.
Former DPhil Student
Hubert is a DPhil student at the OII, interested in computational propaganda and social movements online.
DPhil Student
Nicole/Yung is a DPhil at the OII. Her research is interested in technology infrastructures and vertical/aerial surveillance.
Former Research Associate
Mona Elswah is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), where she examines digital repression, collective actions, and disinformation in the Arab world
DPhil Student
Kate is a Wellcome Trust scholar and doctoral researcher at the OII's Programme on Democracy & Technology (DemTech). Her research project deploys mixed methods to explore the influence of misinformation on vaccine hesitancy in the UK.
DPhil Student
Lisa-Maria Neudert is a DPhil Student researching platform governance and regulation in response to mis/disinformation.
DPhil Student
Alexandra is a DPhil candidate at the OII and a researcher on the Programme on Democracy and Technology studying the gendered dimensions of political communication during times of conflict.
DPhil Student
Marcel is a doctoral candidate in Social Data Science and Researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project. His research is at the intersection of political science, statistics and computer science, with a focus on elections and disinformation.
Former Research Assistant
Samantha left the OII to become Assistant Professor at American University. She specialises in computational propaganda, social media and democracy, human rights, and Internet policy
Leeds University
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
California State University-San Jose
Illinois Institute of Technology
University of Michigan
Stanford University
Former Research Associate
Nahema was a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and a researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project.
University of Illinois-Chicago
Tufts University
University of New South Wales
Gulf University for Science and Technology
Former Research Assistant
Samuel Woolley was the Director of Research of the Computational Propaganda project, and left the OII to become Assistant Professor at the University of Texas.
Louisiana State University
Former MSc Student
Hannah Bailey studied for an MSc in the Social Science of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute. Research interests include China-US relations and China’s use of online censorship, with a focus on automated content analysis.
