Skip to main content

Profiles

Andrew Lowenthal

Andrew Lowenthal is an Australian writer and researcher. He is co-founder and executive director of EngageMedia, and director of liber-net.[1][2] He is a Brownstone Institute fellow.[3]

He publishes a Substack series called Network Affects and writes for Matt Taibbi's Racket News series, where he collaborates with Taibbi on the Twitter Files. He has written stories about the Atlantic Council, the Virality Project and the "censorship-industrial complex."[1:1][4]

He is a former fellow of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society,[5] the Film Study Center at Harvard University[6] and the MIT Open Documentary Lab.[7]

History

Lowenthal was actively involved with the Indymedia network from 2000-2006.[8] He co-founded EngageMedia in 2005.[9] From 2006-2008, he worked with the Tactical Technology Collective, producing a series of open source media toolkits for activists.

He was a fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab from 2013-2015.[6:1] In 2015, Lowenthal was made a Ford Foundation JustFilms fellow.[2:1]

COVID-19

In November 2021, Andrew Lowenthal announced he would be transitioning out of his role as Executive Director of EngageMedia into a position on the organization's board of directors.[10] Phet Sayo was announced as his successor on June 7, 2022.[11] The transition was completed in early September 2022, with Lowenthal joining the board and becoming a specialist advisor for the organization.[12]

Lowenthal was listed on the organization's website until at least January 2023, but had been removed sometime prior to August 2023.[9:1][13]

Lowenthal co-arranged a meeting in late June 2023 in Westminster, London alongside Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger which brought together a group of "free speech champions."[14] This led to the development of the Westminster Declaration, which was published on October 18, 2023 with over one hundred signatures.[15]

  1. Home. Liber-Net. Retrieved October 28, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.10.28-185448/https://liber-net.org/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Andrew Lowenthal. Australian International Documentary Conference. Retrieved October 28, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20231028190436/https://www.aidc.com.au/whos-coming/andrew-lowenthal/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Lowenthal, A. (2023, March 19). Censorship Masquerades and Disinformation Control. Brownstone Institute. http://archive.today/2023.10.29-012558/https://brownstone.org/articles/censorship-masquerades-and-disinformation-control/ ↩︎

  4. Schmidt, S., Lowenthal, A., Wyatt, T., et al. (2023, May 10). Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know. Substack; Racket News. http://archive.today/2023.05.30-192620/https://www.racket.news/p/report-on-the-censorship-industrial-74b ↩︎

  5. Andrew Lowenthal. Berkman Klein Center. Retrieved October 29, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.10.29-000525/https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/alowenthal ↩︎

  6. Andrew Lowenthal. The Film Study Center at Harvard University. Retrieved October 29, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.10.29-000834/https://filmstudycenter.fas.harvard.edu/fellows-works/andrew-lowenthal/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Andrew Lowenthal. MIT Open Documentary Lab. Retrieved October 29, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.10.29-001111/http://opendoclab.mit.edu/andrew-lowenthal-research-affiliate/ ↩︎

  8. Andrew Lowenthal. Indonesian Visual Art Archive. Retrieved October 29, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20231029011751/http://archive.ivaa-online.org/pelakuseni/andrew-lowenthal ↩︎

  9. Committee of Management (Board). EngageMedia. Retrieved January 31, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230131062134/https://engagemedia.org/com/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  10. Lowenthal, A. (2021, November 30). Executive director succession: setting the stage for EngageMedia’s next era. EngageMedia. http://archive.today/2023.10.29-194001/https://engagemedia.org/2021/next-era/ ↩︎

  11. Phet Sayo to be EngageMedia’s next Executive Director. (2022, June 7). EngageMedia. https://web.archive.org/web/20231029193526/https://engagemedia.org/2022/next-executive-director/ ↩︎

  12. Lowenthal, A. (2022, September 8). Renewing the fight for digital rights. EngageMedia. https://web.archive.org/web/20231029193453/https://engagemedia.org/2022/transition-renewing-fight-digital-rights/ ↩︎

  13. Committee of Management (Board). EngageMedia. Retrieved August 5, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230805130814/https://engagemedia.org/com/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  14. Lowenthal, A. (2023, October 18). Launching the Westminster Declaration. Network Affects; Substack. http://archive.today/2023.10.29-005951/https://networkaffects.substack.com/p/launching-the-westminster-declaration ↩︎

  15. Home. The Westminster Declaration. Retrieved October 29, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.10.29-005845/https://westminsterdeclaration.org/ ↩︎