Renee diresta is a disinformation researcher with the stanford internet observatory. She's seen all the things that russia did to manipulate the elections and 20 16. Today we have her on talking about chronovyrus conspiracy theories. We've been tracking how information environment has gone totally hay wire, and especially manipulated by foreign actors.
How does disinformation spread in the age of COVID-19? It takes an expert like Renée DiResta to trace conspiracy theories back to their source. She’s already exposed how Russian state actors manipulated the 2016 election, but that was just a prelude to what she’s seeing online today: a convergence of state actors and lone individuals, anti-vaxxers and NRA supporters, scam artists and preachers and the occasional fan of cuddly pandas. What ties all of these disparate actors together is an information ecosystem that’s breaking down before our eyes. We explore what’s going wrong and what we must do to fix it in this interview with Renée DiResta, Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory.