I am a media scholar researching social media and its implications on how we communicate with each other, engage in humanitarian activism in our communities, and influence the outcomes of military conflicts near and far. My specific interest is in non-Western and post-colonial contexts, such as that of Ukraine.
I hold positions of a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures and the Director of the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Sydney. I earned my Master of Public Administration and PhD in interdisciplinary Social Science from Syracuse University. Currently, I am an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow working on a project that maps colonial topographies of digital sovereignty in Ukraine, as well as chief investigator on a suite of research projects that explore digital and social media in a geopolitical context.
Having served as an editor of the Digital War journal (2020-2023), I provide regular media commentary on the role of digital media in wars, specifically in the context of Russian invasion of Ukraine. I regularly appear on ABC, BBC, CNN, SkyNews, Channel24, CNA, Bloomberg, and have written for the Conversation, Foreign Policy, Sydney Morning Herald, The Strategist, and many others. I currently serve as Director of the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia and Executive Committee member of the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand, and am on the list of prominent Australians personally sanctioned by the Kremlin.
For inquiries, please contact me at olga.boichak[at]sydney.edu.au.
Recent work:
How Russia invaded Wikipedia – my latest article for Foreign Policy.
Useful links:
Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Sydney
Personal profile at the University of Sydney, Digital Cultures Program, Department of Media and Communications, School of Literature, Art and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney
Social Media and Data Science Research Group (University of Sydney)
Emerging Online Safety Issues Project (University of Sydney)
Social Science PhD Program, Maxwell School, Syracuse University – hold a doctorate from this School
School of Information Studies, Syracuse University – taught an undergraduate course at this school
Illuminating – formerly part of the Illuminating team developing a social listening tool (2016-2019)
Social Media Lab, Ryerson University – I was a Visiting Scholar here in Spring 2018
Association of Internet Researchers – my interdisciplinary home