Understanding and Combating Disinformation in Public Diplomacy

On March 14, 2024, CPD hosted at the new USC Capital Campus in Washington, D.C., a timely conversation on combating disinformation in public diplomacy.

Dozens of national elections are set to occur worldwide in 2024, marking disinformation as a major potential challenge. With its capacity to distort and manipulate public perception, disinformation not only undermines the essence of diplomatic engagement but also poses a significant threat to the integrity of global discourse. 

This event offered the latest insights from academic research on the nature and scope of disinformation and the counter-strategies to combat it.

About Josephine Lukito

Josephine ("Jo") Lukito is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. Jo studies cross-platform media language in the global political communication context, focusing especially on interactions between news and different social media platforms. Jo’s ongoing work studies political mis- and disinformation, including the impact of Russian disinformation on political communication ecologies more broadly. She has discussed her research in Columbia Journalism Review and on CNN; this research was also cited in Robert Mueller’s 2018 report (p. 27).

About Erik Nisbet

Erik C. Nisbet (Ph.D., Cornell University) is a CPD Faculty Fellow, the Owen L. Coon Endowed Professor of Policy Analysis & Communication, and director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. His research lies at the intersection of media, public opinion, and public policy in the areas of science, technology, and environmental policy, democracy and elections, and international security. His research has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the U.S. Department of State.

About Ethan Porter

Ethan Porter is Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs and of Political Science at George Washington University. He holds appointments in the School of Media and Public Affairs and the Political Science Department and is the Cluster Lead of the Misinformation/Disinformation Lab at GW's Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications, and has received grant support from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Omidyar Network. False Alarm: The Truth About Political Mistruths in the Trump Era, a book co-authored with Thomas J. Wood, was published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. His second book, The Consumer Citizen, is out now from Oxford University Press. 

About Jay Wang (Moderator)

Dr. Jian (Jay) Wang is Director of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and an Associate Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He previously worked for the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he advised clients on matters of communication strategy and implementation across a variety of industries and sectors. He is co-editor of the newly published book Debating Public Diplomacy: Now and Next. He is the author of Shaping China’s Global Imagination: Nation Branding at the World Expo and several other books.