"The highest-profile scholar of misinformation is being forced out at Harvard’s premier public policy school..."

"... and interviews and internal documents reviewed by Semafor illustrate the institution’s discomfort with her high-profile and politically charged work. Joan Donovan, Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, is a defining and combative voice in the study of how false information travels on the internet. She became a prominent commentator after the 2016 election of Donald Trump, when many Democrats blamed misinformation on social media for his election. Her departure is tangled up in the arguments over whether misinformation is an academic pursuit or a partisan one, and it played out inside a cautious, American institution trying to hold a shrinking political center."

Write Ben Smith and Louise Matsakis at Semafor. 

That's the beginning of the article, and my first question — after I absorbed the idea that "misinformation"  is a field of scholarly study — was which way does this "politically charged work" lean? Too left? Too right? Too in-between? 

How far must I read to get to an answer? Without an answer, I feel misinformed by this article about misinformation.

There's some Facebook-related intrigue: one of Donovan's challengers was once the head of policy at Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg has given millions to the Kennedy School, and Donovan has some "involvement" with an archive of documents leaked by a Facebook whistle-blower. The Facebook policy, we're told, is not to act as an arbiter of truth.

We're also told of an incident in which Donovan "took heat from the political left." I think that suggests that she herself is on the left. 

In January of 2021, a Shorenstein Center journal, Misinformation Review, whose editorial board includes Donovan, published a paper led by another researcher, Mutale Nkonde. The paper accused a group called American Descendants of Slavery of engaging in what it called "disinformation creep."

The paper relied on research from the progressive group MoveOn, and provoked heated denials from its subjects. In December of 2021, the journal retracted the study, finding that it “failed to meet professional standards of validity and reliability,” and that its conclusions were based on “a few selected tweets.”

Misinformation Review’s editors said the retraction was in response to complaints from ADOS, which last summer filed a defamation lawsuit against the Kennedy School and the author. Nkonde’s allies blamed Donovan, who does not oversee the journal.

Does not oversee the journal but is on the editorial board? 

In a letter to Donovan last October, Jessie Daniels, a professor at Hunter College, accused Donovan of engaging in a “nefarious whisper campaign” against Nkonde, and letting down the fight against “white supremacy” in favor of “maintaining the (white) status quo.” Daniels demanded Donovan apologize and tell funders that she was “mistaken,” and continued: “If, however, you’re not able to take this in, then what will happen next is not going to be pleasant for you.”...

So the alleged misinformation is itself, allegedly misinformation. How can you do this kind of study without attracting a strong defense from those you accuse — especially if you are accusing from a perch at Harvard? 

I don't think the Semafor article ever answered my question whether Donovan leaned left or right. I do see that she seems to have offended 2 entities — Facebook and American Descendants of Slavery. I looked up American Descendants of Slavery in Wikipedia and see this presentation of the controversy:

In a 2020 article in Misinformation Review... a group of authors, including academics and journalists, some affiliated with the Democratic Party-linked activist group MoveOn, analyzed postings with the #ADOS hashtag on Twitter in the runup to that year's elections, where ADOS had urged voters not to cast a presidential vote for any Democrat unless the party formally endorsed reparations. The authors concluded that ADOS was a disinformation operation that served the interests of the political right by discouraging Blacks from voting....

So it seems that "Misinformation Review" was serving the interests of the Democratic Party. Is this why the Semafor article feels so obscure? It's hard to say whether it's left or right wing to criticize a group that seems to be on the left for helping the political party on the right.

I wish Semafor would work harder at speaking clearly about this problem! It's important to look at the way black people are expected to vote for Democrats. Here, it seems, ADOS was making strong demands and trying to exert real pressure on Democrats. How is that "misinformation"? It's just a political technique that hurts Democrats.

ADDED: Back in November 2021, Ben Smith himself wrote a NYT article that featured Donovan, "Inside the ‘Misinformation’ Wars/Journalists and academics are developing a new language for truth. The results are not always clearer."

Shorenstein’s research director, Joan Donovan.... strongly objected to my suggestion that the term ["misinformation"] lacks a precise meaning. She added that, appearances aside, she doesn’t believe the word is merely a left-wing label for things that Democrats don’t like.

Ha ha. Was it part of Smith's "suggestion" that "misinformation" is "merely a left-wing label for things that Democrats don’t like" or did Donovan come up with the scathing suggestion herself just so she could deny it? I think Smith said it and Smith thinks it — correctly! — so why doesn't he own it? At least in 2021, when writing for the NYT, he spelled it out — "merely a left-wing label for things that Democrats don’t like." Now, on his own new project Semafor, he's much more obtuse. Is that because he's pitching Semafor at a higher-education level? Or is it because he wants to serve the interests of Democrats?

The 2021 piece continues:

Instead, she traces the modern practice of “disinformation” (that is, deliberate misinformation) to the anti-corporate activists the Yes Men, famous for hoaxed corporate announcements and other stunts, and the “culture jamming” of Adbusters. But their tools, she wrote, have been adopted by “foreign operatives, partisan pundits, white supremacists, violent misogynists, grifters and scammers.”...

That's a cagey answer. She's tracing the origin of the term and the "modern practice," and that may not seem to be all about helping the Democratic Party, but the question should be about what was going on with the research she directs. Is that about looking for things Democrats don't like?