Information Manipulation in Digital Spaces: Doing Public Interest Research Amidst Political Pressure
Speaker
Renée DiRestaDate & time
How to attend
Renée DiResta studies adversarial abuse online—ways that people attempt to manipulate, harass, or target others within the constantly evolving landscape of digital platforms. She will discuss her empirical research on the ways propagandists deliberately undermine belief in the legitimacy of institutions that make society work, and share how she translates her work into policy suggestions to mitigate online information manipulation. Drawing on her personal experience coming under fire for her public interest research, she will share advice on how to do scientific research in a highly politicized environment. Early arrival attendees will receive a copy of DiResta’s latest book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, while supplies last. Reception to follow in Rackham Assembly Hall.
Speaker Bio:
From 2019-2023 Renée DiResta was the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies. Renée has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations on issues related to technology and policy, including information operations, generative AI, election security, researcher transparency, and more. At the behest of SSCI, she led outside teams investigating both the Russia-linked Internet Research Agency’s multi-year effort to manipulate American society and elections, and the GRU influence campaign deployed alongside its hack-and-leak operations in the 2016 election.
DiResta is a contributor at The Atlantic. Her bylined writing has also appeared in Wired, Foreign Affairs, Columbia Journalism Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Yale Review, The Guardian, POLITICO, Slate, and Noema, as well as many academic journals. She has been a Presidential Leadership Scholar (a program run by the Presidents Bush, Clinton, and the LBJ Foundations); an Emerson Fellow, a Truman National Security Project fellow, Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, a Harvard Berkman- Klein affiliate, and a Council on Foreign Relations term member.