Tom Kissock

Tom Kissock has fifteen years’ experience as a Director, Executive Producer, and Livestream expert for the BBC, YouTube, NBC, and Cisco; coupled with seven years’ experience researching video witnessing and human rights abuses. In 2020 he received his MSc in Globalization and Latin American Development from UCL where his research used Video Data Analysis as a research methodology. He tracked how populist politicians in Brazil built misinformation campaigns by strategically cross-sharing videos to avoid journalistic questioning as a symbolic accountability mechanism during the 2018 presidential elections. His PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge is a loose extension of his MSc, but explores positive aspects of streaming advocacy, such as how Indigenous video activists in Brazil use live video on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Kwai to reach audiences to discuss climate change, the environment, and land rights. He is interested in how video can produce knowledge and subsequently how societies value different knowledges through the process of video witnessing. In his spare time, he serves as the Executive Producer of Declarations: Human Rights Podcast (part of Cambridge’s Centre for Governance and Human Rights), has given lectures on livestreaming and human rights at MIT, UCL, and the University of Essex, and has written pieces for LatAM Diagloue and the Latin American Bureau.