Hossein Derakhshan is an Iranian-Canadian author, researcher and public speaker, and a pioneer of blogging, podcasting and technology journalism in Iran. He is currently completing a PhD on the socio-spatiality of algorithmic listening at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Before starting his PhD, he spent 2018 as a research fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School and at the MIT Media Lab, where he co-authored the Council of Europe-commissioned Information Disorder report on the theory and practice of information disorder. which is known as “fake news”.
Hossein spent six years in prison in Iran from 2008 to 2014 for his writings and digital activism. After his release, Derakhshan wrote an essay on the demise of blogs titled “The Web We Must Save,” translated and published in numerous languages, as well as one on television in prison titled “The Reinvention of Television and the Post-Age enlightenment”.
His other interests include journalism studies (“Post-news Journalism”), platforms (“How about a European social platform for news”), information disorders (“Disinfo wars”).
His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Wired, Libération, Die Zeit, El Pais and Corriere Della Sera.
He tweets regularly at @h0d3r and posts at hoder.com.
