The Commission on Information Disorder aims to identify and prioritize the most critical sources and causes of information disorder and deliver a set of short-term actions and longer-term goals to help government, the private sector, and civil society respond to this modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions.
Throughout the preparation and planning process, Aspen Digital is engaging a variety of individuals who have technical expertise and experience with the platforms. As Technical Advisors, their primary role is to be on-hand to provide the Commission on Information Disorder with enhanced understanding of the issues it’s considering, and to provide advice as requested on potential solutions it might recommend. Technical Advisors are not compensated.
Meet the Advisors
danah boyd Partner Researcher, Microsoft Research
danah boyd is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research, the founder and president of Data & Society, and a Visiting Professor at New York University. Her research is focused on addressing social and cultural inequities by understanding the relationship between technology and society. Her most recent books—It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens and Participatory Culture in a Networked Age—examine the intersection of everyday practices and social media. She is a 2011 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Director of both Crisis Text Line and Social Science Research Council, and a Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian. She received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brown University, a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab, and a Ph.D in Information from the University of California, Berkeley.
Renée DiResta Technical Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory
Renée DiResta is the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social and other media networks. Renee’s areas of research include disinformation and propaganda by state-sponsored actors, and health misinformation and conspiracy theories. Renee 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 statesponsored 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 and The Atlantic. Her tech industry writing, analysis, talks, and data visualizations have been featured or covered by numerous media outlets including the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Politico, TechCrunch, Wired, Slate, Forbes, Buzzfeed, The Economist, Journal of Commerce, and more. She is a 2019 Truman National Security Project security fellow, a 2019 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, and a Council on Foreign Relations term member. Renée is a co-author of The Hardware Startup: Building your Product, Business, and Brand, published by O’Reilly Media.
Joan Donovan Research Director, Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Director of the Technology and Social Change project
Dr. Donovan is a leading public scholar and disinformation researcher, specializing in media manipulation, political movements, and extremism. As the Research Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Director of the Technology and Social Change project, Dr. Donovan is a thought leader, and sought-after social scientist whose expertise is in internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns.
Dr. Donovan has coined many of the terms that the disinformation field and mainstream media use to understand technologies’ impact on society, and she has laid out the philosophical frameworks for how to research, report on, and understand this moment in internet history and American politics. Her conceptualizations of strategic silence, meme wars, and media manipulation campaigns provide crucial frameworks for understanding how the US got to this point. Dr. Donovan has testified in front of Congress about the trust costs of misinformation, as well as Qanon and conspiracy, and helps policymakers understand how regulation could help society adapt to and defend against disinformation. She also discusses the implications of her research with major technology companies and start-ups, and government defense agencies such as DARPA, the DOD, and ISAT. Dr. Donovan is a co-creator of the beaver emoji.
Evelyn Douek, Lecturer on Law and S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, Associate Research Scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
Evelyn Douek is a Lecturer on Law and S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, Associate Research Scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She studies online speech regulation and platform governance. Before coming to Harvard to complete a Master of Laws, Evelyn clerked for the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, the Hon. Justice Susan Kiefel, and worked as a corporate litigator. She received her LL.B. from UNSW Sydney, where she was Executive Editor of the UNSW Law Journal.
Emily Frye, Director of Cyber Integration at MITRE
Ms. Emily Frye iis Director for Cyber Integration for the civilian enterprise at The MITRE Corporation. The Cyber Integration group identifies cyber needs and demands across the civilian sponsor arena and serves as the connective tissue between MITRE offerings and sponsor priorities. This organization is also responsible for driving corporate efforts to press forward in developing leading-edge solutions to address emerging cybersecurity challenges that our sponsors face.
Ms. Frye also serves as CoDirector of ElectionIntegrity@MITRE, best known for pioneering the nationwide SQUINT program for misinformation.
Ms. Frye previously served as the Director of National Protection and Resilience within the HSSEDI FFRDC. Ms. Frye has practiced law, moved a startup through three rounds of venture funding, served as the Director of Research for a think tank, and consulted extensively across technical and policy issues in both the public and private sectors. Her particular expertise brings together technical, legal, and business perspectives to inform homeland security risk and resilience management, cybersecurity policy and critical infrastructure protection. With twenty years of experience in creating novel solutions to the problems associated with emerging technology and security risk, she is seasoned in guiding divergent communities toward uniquely effective solutions. Her relationships with stakeholders across industry and government bring cross-sectoral depth to the design and execution of programs, exercises, analyses, and related events.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook
Nathaniel Gleicher is an engineer and a lawyer, and works at the intersection of technology, policy, and law. He has taught computer programming, built and secured computer networks, prosecuted cybercrime at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served as Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the National Security Council (NSC) in the White House. At the NSC, he developed U.S. government policy on key technology and cybersecurity challenges, including encryption, cyber deterrence, internet governance, and network security. Since leaving government, Nathaniel served as head of cybersecurity strategy at Illumio, and is currently the Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook.
Deborah Rajii, Fellow at Mozilla
Deborah is a Mozilla fellow, interested in algorithmic auditing. She has worked closely with the Algorithmic Justice League initiative, founded by Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab, on several award-winning projects to highlight cases of bias in facial recognition. She was a mentee in Google AI’s flagship research mentorship cohort, working with their Ethical AI team on various projects to operationalize ethical considerations in ML practice, including the Model Cards documentation project, and SMACTR internal auditing framework. She was also recently a research fellow at the Partnership on AI, working on formalizing documentation practice in Machine Learning through their ABOUT ML initiative, as well as at the AI Now Institute at New York University pushing forward benchmarking and model evaluation norms. She was recently named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and MIT Tech Review 35 Under 35 Innovators.
Thomas Rid, Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University
Thomas Rid is Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Rid’s most recent book, Active Measures, tells a startling history of disinformation. His book, Rise of the Machines (2016), tells the sweeping story of how cybernetics, a late-1940s theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war (also in Chinese, Russian, German, Japanese, Turkish). His 2015 article “Attributing Cyber Attacks” was designed to explain, guide, and improve the identification of network breaches (Journal of Strategic Studies 2015). In 2013 he published the widely-read book Cyber War Will Not Take Place. Rid testified on information security in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as well as in the German Bundestag and the UK Parliament. From 2011 to 2016, Rid was a professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Between 2003 and 2010, he worked at major think tanks in Berlin, Paris, Jerusalem, and Washington, DC. Rid holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin.
Yoel Roth, Head of Site Integrity at Twitter
Yoel is the Global Head of Site Integrity and Director of Trust & Safety at Twitter. He leads the teams responsible for detecting and mitigating threats to the Twitter platform and people on Twitter, including platform manipulation, spam, misinformation, and state-backed disinformation. Before joining Twitter, Yoel received his PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His research and teaching focused on the intersecting dynamics of privacy, safety, and self-expression on social networking services, with a particular focus on mobile dating applications.
Alicia Wanless, Director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Alicia Wanless is the director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Alicia researches how people shape—and are shaped—by a changing information space. With over a decade of experience in researching and analyzing the information environment, focusing on propaganda and information warfare, Wanless applies this learning to support government, military, and major tech companies to develop policies and integrate information activities into training programs that better reflect how the information environment is manipulated. Wanless is currently a PhD Researcher at King’s College London, exploring alternative frameworks for understanding the information environment.
Clement Wolf, Global Public Policy Lead for Information Integrity at Google.
Clement Wolf is a technology policy and communications expert with over ten years of experience addressing online content issues. As Google’s global public policy lead for information integrity, he helps develop policies, products, and initiatives across Google and YouTube to address misinformation; combat influence operations; and develop further dialogue with experts across civil society, academia, and government. Prior to this position, he advised Google’s Search and News teams on product and policy development and worked in communications at Google France. He was also a 2020 Assembly fellow with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
Clement is a graduate of Pantheon-Sorbonne University (BA, Law), Sciences Po Paris (MA, International Affairs / Security), ESSEC Business School (MA, Management).
