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Rebekah Larsen

Rebekah Larsen is a media sociologist with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Her work uncovers and analyses understudied media ecosystems, with special attention to sociotechnical change and power relations within these systems. Recent scholarly sites of inquiry include conservative talk radio stations in rural Utah (and ethnographic work in conservative spaces); the new global network of fact checkers funded by social media platform content moderation contracts; and search engine manipulation of journalists and activists around a controversial 2010s privacy regulation. Informed also by cultural studies and conjunctural analysis, she uses a blend of ethnographic, historical, and computational methods. Her work also engages in reflexive critique of digital media research methods. Her publications have variously addressed leaked personal data from platform whistleblowers; tradeoffs in platform-journalist partnerships; and changes in the fact-checking field around publics and technologies. Prior to MIT, Rebekah was a postdoctoral fellow on an interdisciplinary team of international journalism scholars, working to understand how newsrooms approach misinformation around elections. She also held a Marie Curie grant at the University of Copenhagen, and was a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project (Yale Law School). She maintains current affiliations as a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center (Harvard Law School) and a Research Associate at the Center for Governance and Human Rights (Cambridge University).