It is almost five years since the Oxford English Dictionary named “post-truth” its word of the year. Since then, the onslaught of fake news, disinformation, and conspiracy theorising have not only remained unrelenting, the problem has grown worse.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, a maturing environment and practice of disinformation has found its ideal host, a virus within a virus. The practice of disinformation during the pandemic has added to existing political divisions in numerous nations and become as much about politics as it is about science.

While vaccines are in the pipeline for COVID-19 itself, discussion is needed in how to tackle the virus of misinformation. The Henry Jackson Society is delighted to invite to a discussion with Damian Collins MP and Nina Jankowicz to elaborate on the disinformation trends seen on both sides of the Atlantic.

Damian Collins is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Folkestone and Hythe. From 2016 to 2019 he was the Chair of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, leading inquiries into doping in sport, disinformation and ‘fake news’, football governance, reality TV, homophobia in sport, and addictive and immersive technologies. He also launched the International Grand Committee, assembling parliamentarians from all over the world to discuss disinformation, data privacy, electoral communications and digital competition; and recently co-founded Infotagion, a fact-checking website and podcast series.

Nina Jankowicz studies the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of How To Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict (Bloomsbury/IBTauris). Ms. Jankowicz has advised the Ukrainian government on strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and others. She is a frequent television and radio commentator on disinformation and Russian and Eastern European affairs. Prior to her Fulbright grant in Ukraine, Ms. Jankowicz managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. She received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and her BA from Bryn Mawr College.

Dr Danny Steed is a research fellow who is particularly engaged in the Henry Jackson Society’s Centre for Cyber, Data, and Online Threats. Previously Danny was Lecturer in Strategy and Defence at the University of Exeter, where he created and delivered numerous courses specialising in national security strategy to student, professional, and military cadres.

Danny has also worked in UK government service in an operational cyber security capacity.  Since then, Danny has been in private industry as a Head of Strategy. During that time, he avidly continued his own scholarship, as a visiting fellow to both the University of Cranfield and the Cyber Norms Program at the University of Leiden in 2019, and continuing to contribute to taught courses, publications and academic events.

Frequently requested as a public speaker, Danny’s most notable keynote address was delivered at the Dutch government’s One Conference 2019 in The Hague, where he spoke on the future generations of cyber security strategies.

He is the author of two books, British Strategy and Intelligence in the Suez Crisis, and The Politics and Technology of Cyberspace, published by Palgrave in 2016 and Routledge in 2019 respectively.

You can register your interest HERE.

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