Alex Goncalves is a PhD candidate at Columbia Journalism School. He is studying the role of social media in the rise of the new Right in Brazil. He is also interested in the use of computational methods to understand media ecosystems. Since the beginning of his doctorate, he has been involved in projects at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. He has an MSc in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and conducted research at the MIT Center for Civic Media. As a Google Journalism Fellow, he worked at the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project. Before moving to the US, he worked in Brazil as a science reporter for mainstream media publications and as a software developer.