Alexandra Pavliuc

Alexandra is a PhD candidate studying Social Data Science at the Oxford Internet Institute and is a researcher on the Programme on Democracy and Technology. During her time at the Weizenbaum-Institut she will further develop her PhD research on the gendered dimensions of digital diplomacy to understand how Ukrainian politicians and their Western allies utilize social media during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To do this, Alexandra builds structural topic models to uncover strategic narratives discussed on social media and uses social network analysis to understand how those narratives are interacted with, and by whom. Alexandra hopes to contribute academic literature to Ukrainian women during war in through the production of empirical research on Ukraine that draws from theories on gendered communication styles and feminist international relations.

Alexandra has researched the prevalence of gendered disinformation in the 2020 U.S. presidential election with The Wilson Centre, and has presented her research on both gender and disinformation at the University of Pennsylvania and the United Nations Development Program. Alexandra also studies possible countermeasures to manipulative content with colleagues at the the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE). She also studied how state-backed information operations targeted France during a Visiting Fellowship at Institut Montaigne. Alexandra holds an MSc (Data Science) from City, University of London and a BA Hons (Professional Communication, Minor in Physics) from Toronto Metropolitan University. In a previous academic life, she studied human-robot interaction and wrote robot jokes for hitchBOT, a hitchhiking robot.

Alexandra has co-edited a Special Issue in Social Media + Society titled “Multidisciplinary Approaches to Mis- and Disinformation Studies”. She also has a forthcoming book chapter in the Routledge Handbook in Conflict and Peacebuilding titled “Social Media as a Conflict Driver and a Tool of Participatory Conflict Communication”. Alexandra’s research mapping Russian information operations through network visualization has been published by the Defence Strategic Communications Journal and featured on CBC News, the LA Times, Engineering and Technology Magazine, and Jane’s Intelligence Review. Her research on the evolution of international disinformation operations has been funded by the Mozilla Foundation and the Data Science Institute at City, University of London.