Gabriel Malo

Gabe Malo is a PhD Candidate in the Institute for Communications Research at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include social media, the alt-right, design and algorithmic justice, disinformation, journalism, gender and queer studies, and critical theories of science and technology. He possesses a bachelor of arts in English from Valparaiso University, and a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois. He currently maintains an affiliation with the University’s Department of Gender & Women’s Studies via his graduate minor in Queer Studies. His current research centers around disinformation, journalism, and algorithmic biases, with a dissertation that is centered on the development of (and responses to) Reddit’s /r/the_donald subreddit. His research perspective is deeply informed by his positionality both as a trans man and as someone with a chronic illness. Currently, he is part of the Platforms, Politics & Local News in Illinois research group, and is one of several students assisting in the Just Infrastructures lecture series. Previously, he was part of the Seeing Systems research cluster. In his dwindling free time, he enjoys tabletop role-playing games, writing poetry, and drinking cold brew coffee.