Inside the Fight Against Election Disinformation, with Renée DiResta

During the 2016 presidential election cycle, Russian operatives used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms to spread disinformation in order to divide the American public. Four years later, misleading and false information about the 2020 presidential election is still rampant online. And this time around, more of that misleading information is coming from domestic actors within the U.S. As research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Renée DiResta investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in devising responses to the problems that those narratives create. On today’s episode, she discusses what it’s like to navigate this online world of propaganda and conspiracy theories. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.