Devo Probol

Devo Probol’s research examines the intersection of digital activism, financial journalism, and economic sociology. Her broader scholarship explores the relevance of collective identity in digital activism and reconsiders how scholars assess movement success and failure.

Devo Probol is a Presidential Ph.D. Fellow, Fontaine Fellow, and Joint Doctoral Candidate in Communication and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds fellowship positions at the Center on Digital Culture and Society, where she leads the Digital Activism & Data Justice research group, the Center for Media at Risk, where she is a Steering Committee Member, and is an inaugural Perry World House Graduate Fellow for the 2025–2026 academic year.

A digital native and professional internet “lurker,” she studies how financial markets have become contentious arenas of digital activism. Her dissertation employs digital ethnography to examine the “double movement” between financial journalism, which seeks to stabilize markets through narrative, and retail investors, who mobilize counter-narratives through memes, testimonials, connective action, and collective action. This work sits at the intersection of digital activism, economic sociology, financial journalism, and performance theory, and asks what happens when people use individual capital, culture, and media to contest capitalism itself.

Beyond this project, her broader scholarship examines core debates in social movement theory. She investigates the continued relevance of collective identity in digital activism, countering claims that it has diminished in importance, and reconsiders how scholars assess the success and failure of digital activism, shifting attention to how movements endure, evolve, and shape publics over time.

Alongside her academic research, Devo is committed to bridging the academic–practitioner divide. She holds an appointment as an Associate at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, where she supports graduate teaching in Visual Communication, Communication Research and Insights, and Political Communication. Prior to graduate study, she worked in the U.S. national security sector, collaborating with the Department of State and Department of Defense across 36 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. She later served as a Communication Strategist for the Chief of Staff at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, focusing on joint communication strategy and processes across the command’s area of responsibility.

Devo earned M.A. degrees in Communication and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania (2024, 2025), an M.S. in Strategic Communication from Columbia University (2020), and a B.A. in History and Religious Studies from Arizona State University (2016), where she was awarded the Dean’s Medal Award, the highest honor conferred by the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies.