About

Zelly Martin is a writer, researcher, and PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in the spread of mis- and disinformation and political propaganda through emerging technology, especially surrounding reproductive rights.

Zelly holds the University Graduate Continuing Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is currently writing her dissertation, which examines the production of digital propaganda, conspiracy, and disinformation by the United States anti-abortion movement after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Zelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement. She has investigated political propaganda, disinformation, and democratic activism on encrypted messaging apps using qualitative interviewing, digital observation, and OSINT techniques in countries including the United States, Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, India, Indonesia, Libya, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, the Philippines, Turkey, and Ukraine, among others.

Zelly’s peer-reviewed journal articles have been published in Big Data & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Social Media + Society, Political Research Quarterly, Journalism Studies, First Monday, Feminist Media Studies, and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Alongside co-editors Dr. Inga Trauthig, Dr. Alice Marwick, and Dr. Sam Woolley, she is currently editing a special issue at the Journal of Information Technology & Politics on conspiracy theory research.

Zelly’s research has appeared in Teen Vogue, Slate Future Tense, Rappler, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Global Network on Extremist and Technology, One to Know Magazine, the Austin Chronicle, and online at the Center for Media Engagement. She has presented this work at conferences including International Communication Association, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, RightsCon, the Association of Internet Researchers conference, and others.

Zelly has a Master of Arts in Journalism and Media from the University of Texas at Austin, where she wrote her thesis on the representation of pregnancy loss in American news media, and a Bachelor of Arts in Feminist Studies from Southwestern University, where she wrote a creative nonfiction thesis that analyzed the experience of pregnancy loss through a critical feminist lens.

She lives in Austin with her two cats, Gob and Bret.