Kaitlyn D. Email & Phone Number

Building Junkipedia.org, a platform to monitor, report, track, and analyze mis- and disinformation.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

I managed external communications for the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology at Harvard Law School. I also served as the editor-in-chief of the Center's blog, Bill of Health.

Cambrige, Ma

In September, I was promoted to Senior Editor in the Information Disorder Lab (IDLab) at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.As Senior Editor, I continued to oversee a team of four research reporters as we monitored disinformation spreading online. I guided revamping our disinformation discovery processes using complex boolean search queries. This lasered our focus in on issues most relevant to the midterm elections. In all, I edited nearly 200 reports and newsletters related to disinformation spreading on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, 4chan, 8chan, and Discord. I also developed a style guide for our reporting, reflecting our specific needs related to the internet, extremism, memes, and disinformation concepts. In November 2018, I also trained two journalists from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (analogous to NPR in the U.S.) on building a team of journalists and researchers to monitor disinformation. During their one-week residency at Harvard, we covered discovery and monitoring methods, overlaps in online extremism between American and Australian politics, disinformation classification and taxonomies, and personal and information security best practices.Following the midterm elections, I authored a paper analyzing the disinformation ecosystem as it related to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination and confirmation hearings. I also co-authored a to-be-published paper establishing a new taxonomy system for disinformation. The project concluded in March 2019.

Cambridge, Ma

In 2018, I became a founding staffer of the Information Disorder Lab (IDLab), housed within the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. The IDLab's goal was to identify, analyze, and report on political disinformation circulating on social media. As Project Coordinator, I assisted with the conference that launched the IDLab's work by introducing it to 100+ journalists from 70+ local and national news organizations and training journalists on how to responsibly report on disinformation -- rather than being duped by it. In the IDLab, I helped oversee a team of four research reporters, ran daily editorial meetings, and ensured reports were distributed to our cohort of journalists in a timely manner. I identified sticking points in the reporting process and implemented a streamlined editorial process that more than doubled daily output by IDLab reporters. Reports were distributed via a password-protected website, mailing list, and Slack workspace -- all of which I coordinated on a daily basis.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

I was the Executive Assistant to Nicco Mele, Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. The Shorenstein Center is one of 11 academic research centers housed within Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. The Center's mission is to bridge the gap between journalists, academics, and the public in the pursuit of strengthening American democracy. As Executive Assistant to the Director, I provided daily scheduling, correspondence, fundraising, writing, and research support. I also served as the main liaison between the Director and anywhere from 10-20 other Center faculty, staff, and fellows. In 2018, I authored the Director’s Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Awards remarks: