Democracy & Elections

The Lawfare Podcast: The Crisis Facing Efforts to Counter Election Disinformation

Quinta Jurecic, Dean Jackson, Jen Patja
Friday, October 20, 2023, 8:00 AM
What are the challenges facing efforts to prevent the spread of election disinformation? 

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Over the course of the last two presidential elections, efforts by social media platforms and independent researchers to prevent falsehoods from spreading about election integrity have become increasingly central to civic health. But the warning signs are flashing as we head into 2024. And platforms are arguably in a worse position to counter falsehoods today than they were in 2020. 

How could this be? On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Dean Jackson, who previously sat down with the Lawfare Podcast to discuss his work as a staffer on the Jan. 6 committee. He worked with the Center on Democracy and Technology to put out a new report on the challenges facing efforts to prevent the spread of election disinformation. They talked through the political, legal, and economic pressures that are making this work increasingly difficult—and what it means for 2024.


Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
Dean Jackson studies democracy, media, and technology. As an analyst for the January 6th Committee, he examined social media's role in the insurrection. Previously, he also managed the Influence Operations Researchers’ Guild at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and oversaw research on disinformation at the National Endowment for Democracy. He holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago and a BA in Political Science from Wright State University.
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of The Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

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