RENEE DIRESTA
Trust and Technical Research Manager
Stanford Internet Observatory
Renée DiResta is a Trust and Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and 2019 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in understanding and responding to the problem. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. Renée regularly writes and speaks about the role that tech platforms and curatorial algorithms play in the proliferation of disinformation and conspiracy theories. She is an Ideas contributor at Wired. Her tech industry writing, analysis, talks, and data visualizations have been featured or covered by numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Politico, TechCrunch, Wired, Slate, Forbes, Buzzfeed, The Economist,
DAVE TROY
LINKEDIN TWITTERCEO
410Labs
Dave Troy is a tech entrepreneur and disinformation researcher. He began studying social media data in 2007, and has been acknowledged as the first developer to use the Twitter API. His data visualization work has been featured in the 2008 exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and at TED. He is also curator of TEDxMidAtlantic in Washington, D.C. since 2009, and is based in Baltimore, Maryland. Dave serves as CEO and product architect at 410 Labs, maker of the popular e-mail management tools Mailstrom.co and Chuck. In the area of disinformation research, his work focuses on the intersection of sociology, network science, and political science. This spring, he curated TEDxMidAtlantic: Info20/20, an event focused on information integrity and cognitive security in partnership with the University of Maryland and The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory.
UMD TEDX
FEATURED SALON SPEAKERS
Dana Priest
Journalist
Dana Priest has been a reporter for The Washington Post for 30 years and is The Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism. She covers mostly national security issues and has been a reporter and contributor to PBS FRONTLINE, NBC and CBS news and 60 Minutes.
Her awards include the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “The Other Walter Reed” and the 2006 Pulitzer for her work on CIA secret prisons and counterterrorism operations as well as two Polk Awards.
She is author of two best-selling books, “THE MISSION: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military” which documents the military’s expanding influence over U.S. foreign affairs (2003), and Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (2011).
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Lilliana Mason
Political Scientist
Lilliana Mason is associate professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (University of Chicago Press). She received her PhD in Political Psychology from Stony Brook University and her BA in Politics from Princeton University.
Her research on partisan identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American social polarization has been published in journals such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Behavior, and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio.
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Steven Hassan
Cult Expert
Steven Hassan M.Ed. LMHC, NCC, is an expert on Undue Influence, brainwashing and unethical hypnosis and author of the best-selling books, Combating Cult Mind Control and The Cult of Trump.
For over forty years, he has helped thousands of individuals and families recover from undue influence (mind control). He is sought after as one of the foremost authorities on undue influence, brainwashing, deprogramming and controlling groups and individuals. Steve understands the subject from a unique perspective as both a former cult member and as a clinical professional.
Steven is the Founding Director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, a coaching, consulting, and training organization dedicated to supporting individuals to have the freedom to think clearly and to freely consider how they want to live their lives.
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Sarah Oates
Media + Democracy Scholar
Sarah Oates is a scholar in the field of political communication and democratization. A major theme in her work is the way in which the traditional media and the internet can support or subvert democracy in places as diverse as Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Prof. Oates also is the Research Director for the College and an affiliate professor in the UMD Department of Communication.
Prof. Oates has published many books, articles, chapters, and papers on topics including how the internet can challenge dictatorship, how election coverage varies in different countries, and how national media systems cover terrorism in distinctive ways. One of her most recent books, Revolution Stalled: The Political Limits of the Internet in the Post-Soviet Sphere (Oxford University Press) found faint hope for online mobilization in Russia.
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Emerson Brooking
Information Warfare Expert
Emerson T. Brooking is a Resident Fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council and coauthor of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media. Most recently, he was Research Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations—the youngest researcher in a generation to receive such an appointment. Brooking has spoken regularly on the topic of information warfare and political manipulation, advising multiple U.S. technology companies and national security entities. He has appeared widely in broadcast media, including NPR’s “Fresh Air,” and his work has been published in Foreign Affairs, WIRED, and Rolling Stone, among others. Brooking was recently named to the Forbes “30 Under 30.” He holds a BA in Political Science and Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
SJ Terp
Cognitive Security Expert
SJ Terp works on disinformation mechanisms and counters. She was CTO of the UN’s big data team, designed machine learning algorithms and unmanned vehicle systems at the UK Ministry of Defence, and taught data science at Columbia University. She holds degrees in AI and neural networks, and used them to build situational awareness for intelligence, transport, disaster and crowdsourced advocacy systems. She runs Bodacea Light Industries, is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council, and chairs the Cognitive Security CoLab.
Laura Rosenberger
Democracy + Policy Specialist
Laura Rosenberger is the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). Before she joined GMF, she was foreign policy advisor for Hillary for America, where she coordinated development of the campaign’s national security policies, messaging, and strategy. Prior to that, she served in a range of positions at the State Department and the White House’s National Security Council (NSC).
As chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken and as later, then-Deputy National Security Advisor Blinken’s senior advisor, she counseled on the full range of national security policy.
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