kunal sharad

writer, copywriter, researcher, and producer working in the social change, nonprofit, and arts sectors.

selected portfolio

the Guardian •

report co-author: election disinformation on tiktok, youtube, and facebook

Co-author and editor on report shared by The Guardian and The Washington Post among others.

YouTube and Facebook are allowing disinformation to be spread about Brazil’s election campaign, adding to the bitterness in an already polarized and violent election, according to a new report by the human rights organization Global Witness.

The NGO produced a series of purposely misleading ads during an election season that has been dominated by the bitter race between far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and his leftist challenger, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Global Witness •

research and comms: global witness digital threats team

An investigation by Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) team at NYU Tandon looked at Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube's ability to detect and remove election disinformation in the run up to the US midterm elections.

The investigation revealed starkly contrasting results for the social media giants in their ability to detect and act against election misinformation. TikTok fared the worst; the platform, which does not allow political ads, approved a full 90% of the ads containing outright false and misleading election misinformation.
Bleep.com •

writer: review of 'fountain' by lyra pramuk

One of 2020’s most satisfying and complete proofs-of-concept, Lyra Pramuk’s “Fountain” was made using the American composer’s voice, and nothing else – adding authenticity and gravitas to every stretched, sampled, pitch-shifted, multi-tracked and enveloping utterance.

The Pennsylvania-born, Berlin-residing and one-time chorist Pramuk recorded her debut album at the tail-end of her 20s, but the path to arrive at that point stretches much farther back. “Fountain” is the result of successive momen
Punctum Books •

writer: 'in the future the means of production will own themselves', post memes: seizing the memes of production

Art-form, send-up, farce, ironic disarticulation, pastiche, propaganda, trololololol, mode of critique, mode of production, means of politicisation, even of subjectivation — memes are the inner currency of the internet’s circulatory system. Independent of any one set value, memes are famously the mode of conveyance for the alt-right, the irony left, and the apoliticos alike, and they are impervious to many economic valuations: the attempts made in co-opting their discourse in advertising and big business have made little headway, and have usually been derailed by retaliative meming.

Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production takes advantage of the meme’s subversive adaptability and ripeness for a focused, in-depth study. Pulling together the interrogative forces of a raft of thinkers at the forefront of tech theory and media dissection, this collection of essays paves a way to articulating the semiotic fabric of the early 21st century’s most prevalent means of content posting, and aims at the very seizing of the memes of production for the imagining and creation of new political horizons.
Penguin Random House, Repeater Books •

writer: 'recurrence of all things', regeneration songs

Twenty-seven leading artists, writers and academics come together to tackle one of the most drastic urban regeneration programmes in world history – the “Regeneration Supernova” of East London.

The impact of global capital and foreign investment on local communities is being felt in major cities across the world. Since the 2012 Olympics was awarded to the British capital, East London has been at the heart of the largest and most all-encompassing top-down urban regeneration strategy in civic history.
University of Leicester •

master's thesis: 'deconstructing the data hyper-assemblage'

How do we begin to theorise the totality of human data, rendered quasi-invisibly in digital space as a floating body of knowledge? The internet architectonic, data’s primary container, constitutes new forms of meaning-making (Haraway 1997) that imbricate the boundary between the material and immaterial (Jordan 2009) in ways that, under our current modes of understanding, seem to mystify, rather than bring clarity to, the question.
SumOfUs •

campaigns and comms: mastercard & britain first campaign

Two of Britain First’s leaders are currently in jail for racist hate crimes. Yet, Mastercard, Visa and American Express continue to process donations for the hate group.

Racist groups can't operate without money.

SumOfUs members have already pushed Paypal to stop processing funding for the violent French white supremacist group Génération Identitaire. Now, let’s make the credit card giants take responsibility and cut all ties with Britain First.
Load More