The Spin Doctors Are In — with Renée DiResta

How does disinformation spread in the age of COVID-19? It takes
an expert like Renée DiResta to trace conspiracy theories back to
their source. She’s already exposed how Russian state actors
manipulated the 2016 election, but that was just a prelude to
what she’s seeing online today: a convergence of state actors and
lone individuals, anti-vaxxers and NRA supporters, scam artists
and preachers and the occasional fan of cuddly pandas. What ties
all of these disparate actors together is an information
ecosystem that’s breaking down before our eyes. We explore what’s
going wrong and what we must do to fix it in this interview with
Renée DiResta, Research Manager at the Stanford Internet
Observatory.