Uploaded March 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
From 2016 to 2020, research, civil society organizing efforts, industry planning, and national security responses to disinformation centered on the issue from the perspective that malign influence was propagated almost exclusively by foreign adversaries. This thinking was upended to a large extent in 2020, when disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the presidential election, and other sustained-attention information events exposed the severity of the threat posed by domestic disinformation.
In this episode of the Breakdown, Oumou Ly is joined by Lisa Kaplan to further unpack what accounts for the shift in focus, whether stakeholders might consider adjusting mitigations already deployed to combat disinformation, and assess how current organizing around the disinformation problem can be reevaluated and repurposed to suit new challenges.
From 2016 to 2020, research, civil society organizing efforts, industry planning, and national security responses to disinformation centered on the issue from the perspective that malign influence was propagated almost exclusively by foreign adversaries. This thinking was upended to a large extent in 2020, when disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the presidential election, and other sustained-attention information events exposed the severity of the threat posed by domestic disinformation.
In this episode of the Breakdown, Oumou Ly is joined by Lisa Kaplan to further unpack what accounts for the shift in focus, whether stakeholders might consider adjusting mitigations already deployed to combat disinformation, and assess how current organizing around the disinformation problem can be reevaluated and repurposed to suit new challenges.
