Courtney Radsch presents to the DDI

AI and Disinformation: State-Aligned Information Operations and the Distortion of the Public Sphere

Courtney C. Radsch, PhD, is a journalist, scholar and practitioner whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, media, and human rights. Currently, she is a fellow at UCLA’s Technology, Law and Policy Institute; a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS); and a visiting scholar at Annenberg’s Center for Media at Risk. Her research focuses on internet governance and the geopolitics of technology, media sustainability and the future of journalism, and power dynamics in digitally inflected information ecosystems. She is the author of Cyberactivism and Citizen Journalism in Egypt: Digital Dissidence and Political Change (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016) based on her pioneering doctoral research and her work has been published in top media outlets and peer-reviewed academic journals. She is a frequent public speaker and frequent media commentator including for CNN, Al Jazeera, NPR, and other global media outlets. Dr. Radsch has led advocacy missions to more than a dozen countries and has provided expert testimony to Congress, the OSCE, OECD, and the United Nations.

She spent seven years as Advocacy Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, where she led its technology policy advocacy and campaigns to free imprisoned journalists, redress impunity for journalist murders, and combat online harassment. As a scholar-practitioner and former journalist in the Middle East, Radsch is deeply interested in the practical implications of her research and serves on a variety of advisory bodies and civil society networks including the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the UN Internet Governance Forum, the International Science Council’s Panel of Experts, and the internet governance academic research network GigaNet. She is a founding member of the Coalition Against Online Violence (COAV), The ACOS Alliance (A Culture of Safety), and the Christchurch Call Advisory Network. She serves on the board of Tech Policy Press and the advisory board of the Dangerous Speech Project and Ranking Digital Rights. She holds a Ph.D. in international relations from American University. Find her on Twitter @courtneyr and www.mediatedspeech.com.