2024-06-12 –, Room D - Water Studio
The panel examines the scale and nature of online disinformation that causes imminent harm in war/conflict. The participants are disinformation experts who focus on Ukraine, Africa and Middle East. Our aim is to bring various perspectives at the same issue: the rise of dangerous disinformation and the subsequent polarisation of societies, wars or even genocides. How do authoritarian governments take advantage of it? What is the role of AI in both uncovering and fighting disinformation? And what can be done to restrain it?
Kyiv-native and Berlin-based, Misha is an independent technology researcher. Misha's main interest is investigative storytelling to uncover harms in technologies. In 2021-2024, Misha was a researcher at *Privacy Not Included.
Olga Tokariuk is a Chatham House OSUN Academy Fellow, Ukraine Forum. Her professional interests are international affairs and research on disinformation, especially in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
She is a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and CEPA non-resident fellow. Olga’s background is in journalism and she has vast experience in Ukrainian and international media. Her work was published by TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, BBC, Monocle, EFE (Spain), ANSA (Italy). She is a former head of foreign news desk at the independent Ukrainian Hromadske TV.
Olga worked on several disinformation research projects with Oxford Analytica, Zinc, Mythos Labs, etc. Mrs Tokariuk is a former scholar of the Digital Sherlocks program at the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab.
Mrs Tokariuk is a frequent guest lecturer at academic institutions including University of Oxford, University of Miami, etc. She holds an MA in political science and international relations from the University of Bologna and an MA in journalism from the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv.
Sarah Sakha is a Public Policy Manager with Meta’s Community Engagement and Advocacy team for the Africa, Middle East, and Turkey region. She focuses on the responsiveness of AI-powered systems to the needs of high-risk communities in the MENA region, as well as the impacts of digital surveillance. Previously, she worked on the localization and decolonization of humanitarian policy at the International Rescue Committee, and on introducing a lens of equity and justice in “data for good” grantmaking at the Rockefeller Foundation. She brings extensive research and writing experience, from examining AI ethics, power, and “public interest” tech, to the histories of Iranian diaspora communities. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Princeton University and a MA in Human Rights Policy with a focus in tech and media from Columbia University and. She is currently on assignment with Meta as a contractor with Magnit.