Josephine | Modern Kilogirl

Josephine ("Jo") Lukito is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media (in the Moody College of Communication). Beginning February 2026, she will be a Professor in Digital Communication at the Digital Data Centre and DIAS Chair at the University of Southern Denmark.

Jo’s research specializes in malicious political language in the public sphere, focusing on cross-platform flows of messages and frames about global economic and political issues. Methodologically, Jo uses in computational and mixed methods analyzing mass communicated text, leveraging corpus and computational linguistics, natural language processing, human and automated content analysis, large language models, and text-as-data strategies. She also studies responsible digital data access, research ethics, and infrastructure and is the Director of the Media and Democracy Data Cooperative.

Jo’s past studies have analyzed linguistic communication phenomenon in U.S. news reporting of international affairs, Russian disinformation, social movements on digital media, and regime changes globally (including the United States, Brazil, and Myanmar) She has discussed her research on Russian disinformation in the Columbia Journalism Review and on CNN; this work was also referenced in Robert Mueller’s 2018 report (p. 27). Her dissertation focused on news coverage and public opinion about U.S.-China trade, revealing how misinformation can emerge from national news coverage of the China Shock.

Her ongoing work focuses on the multi-platform spread of political information in nation-states by politicians, news media organizations, influential actors, social movements, and citizens/publics. This work motivated Jo’s interest in responsible data access, social media research infrastructure, and scholarly solidarity.

A first-generation undergraduate and graduate student, Jo earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communication at the State University of New York, Geneseo, where she published her first paper. She earned her M.A. in Media Studies at the Newhouse School of Public Communications in Syracuse University. A version of her thesis, "Linguistic Abstractness as a Discursive Microframe: LCM Framing in International Reporting by American News Media," received the second top student paper award at the 2015 Association in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference. 

Jo earned her Ph.D in Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Summer of 2020. Jo earned her Master’s in Media Studies from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and her B.A. in Communication and Political Science from SUNY Geneseo. She holds Ph.D minors in English Language & Linguistics and Political Science (methodology & IR).

“Language can only be understood in the context of communication.”

— Newmeyer, 1999