Kaia Nisser & Andreas \u00d6nnerfors, Fojo Media Institute \u00a9 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDemonized by the American right, banned by Putin\u2019s Russia, undeterred\u201d \u2013 this self proclaimed description<\/a> summarises the experiences of global disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz. In an exclusive interview with Kaia Nisser and Andreas \u00d6nnerfors from Fojo Media Institute, Jankowicz provided a detailed account of her career, the challenges she has faced and her ongoing efforts to combat disinformation. The most important message: we are in this together. There is no quick fix; no magic silver bullet to restore a productive societal discourse; what we need is a \u201ccommunity-based approach and getting back to basics and putting people face-to-face across tables to talk about things\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We met Jankowicz about a week after the recent US presidential elections in early November. She was in Stockholm to present a keynote at the philanthropic Beijer-Foundation\u2019s 50th<\/sup> Anniversary<\/a>. Considering her books such as How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict<\/em><\/a> (2020) and How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment and How to Fight Back<\/em><\/a> (2022), our conversation promised to provide with important insights into the fractured information landscape of our times, not least in the light of the recent US elections. Already in February 2024, she had published an article in Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/a> titled \u201cThe Coming Flood of Disinformation. How Washington Gave Up on the Fight Against Falsehoods\u201d. Here Jankowicz painted a gloomy picture of what lies ahead of us during the next few years: \u201can information ecosystem that is more ripe for manipulation than ever\u201d. We began by asking Jankowicz about the statement on her website: \u2018Demonized by the American right, banned by Putin’s Russia, undeterred.\u2019 We were curious about its background and how a Swedish audience could grapple with the recent US presidential elections through hearing her story. To Jankowicz, \u201cthe Russia portion \u2026 explains how I got to the demonized by the right portion\u201d, thereby understanding disinformation as a global phenomenon with global repercussions. When the first war in Ukraine began in 2014, she \u201cfelt a draw to go out to the region\u201d since \u201cthere was a lot of work to be done and a story to be told about the way that social media was influencing that\u201d. While in Kyiv in 2016 and 2017 Jankowicz realized there were overlaps between her work and the election of Trump in 2016, which \u201creally changed how we thought about disinformation\u201d. Most critically, \u201cit was clear to me a long time before, I don’t want to say that I was a Cassandra, but I recognized that Russia was doing things on the internet that the West wasn\u2019t quite prepared for\u201d. It emerged that Russia was painting the presence of various US programs in the area \u201cas if we were doing nefarious activities\u201d. Jankowicz pleaded with her management that \u201cwe needed to be more proactive in our communications so that we didn\u2019t cede the narrative ground to Russia\u201d. For Jankowicz, 2016 was a watershed moment: \u201cTrump was elected and the whole world woke up to the threat of Russian disinformation or influence online\u201d. This is where it escalates: \u201cthe Republicans saw a chance to really demonize me and politicize this topic, which shouldn’t have been something that was politicized\u201d. Jankowicz\u2019 standpoint is clear, \u201cdisinformation has a huge effect on American national security. It had an effect on public health just a few years before that\u201d. During spring of 2022, as the US was slowly returning from measures to counter COVID-19, the DGB ignited the emotions of the right: \u201cSenators, members of Congress were all going after me and they were going after me in very personal ways. They claimed that the board was going to be a ministry of truth. They claimed that it was going to censor people. That wasn\u2019t true. DHS didn\u2019t really respond. They kind of just were like deer in headlights\u201d.
Fojo\u2019s Stockholm offices are located in an old 17th<\/sup>-century palace<\/a> just opposite the royal castle. As Sweden celebrates more than 250 years of The Freedom of the Press Act<\/a> as a constitutional law, it seems strange to imagine that deliberative democracy could decay from inside \u2013 fuelled by outside manipulation. But recent revelations such as troll factories operating in the shadows of populist politics, a coordinated information influence campaign against the Swedish social services, Quran burnings and divisions related to global conflicts reveal significant cracks in the formation of public opinion. Thus we were curious what light Jankowicz could shed on such a context from her rich experience in the field.
First, some basics for those who are not familiar with her exceptional career. Jankowicz began as an expert on Russia and managed programmes providing democratic assistance to Russia and Belarus for the National Democratic Institute (NDI<\/a>). Her focus shifted significantly towards disinformation during the first 2014 Ukraine war. She was in Kyiv on a Fulbright grant in 2016-2017, during which she concentrated on disinformation, especially after Trump\u2019s election. This period marked a pivotal shift in her career towards disinformation research as it emphasised the lessons from Eastern Europe for the American public. In 2020 Jankowicz was appointed to lead the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The board aimed to coordinate disinformation policy within DHS with the imperative to ensure that civil rights and liberties were protected. However, her appointment was heavily politicised which led to personal attacks and threats. The DGB was disbanded before it had even started its activities. In response to these challenges, Jankowicz founded the American Sunlight Project (ASP) which is devoted to maintaining the fight against disinformation: a core theme of our conversation. How was it possible that her work to combat disinformation was derailed? How and by whom was Jankowicz attacked? And what is on the horizon? We have divided our conversation into two parts: the first regarding the situation roughly before the US elections in 2024 and the second exploring the challenges and potential solutions of the future.
After grabbing a coffee in the lush reception suite of the Fleming-palace, with huge mirrors and doors adorned with winged golden sphinxes and windows facing the royal palace, we came to a meeting room aptly called \u2018Artery\u2019. We sat down together to discuss how to keep the oxygen of trustworthy information circulating in our body politic.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBanned by Putin\u2019s Russia<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Jankowicz explains how this shaped her view: \u201cwhat I was seeing in Kyiv, the things that were working and the things that weren\u2019t working were really important to bring to bear for the American public. And so I just started writing and researching and talking about the lessons that we could learn from Eastern Europe\u201d.
But how could these insights be translated to a domestic context? During some time spent at a nonpartisan think tank in Washington called the Wilson Center<\/a>, at the same time as Biden was elected in 2020, she got a call from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS, \u201ca bit of a Frankenstein of an agency that includes many different government departments \u2026 that have to do with the security\u201d). DHS wanted \u201csomebody to come and run policy about disinformation in the department and they called this thing that they wanted me to lead the Disinformation Governance Board [DGB], very bad name to anybody who is outside of government\u201d. The intention with the DGB \u201cin their kind of myopic governmental view\u201d was \u201cto govern how the department did its work about disinformation, making sure that it was protecting civil rights, civil liberties, and fundamental freedoms, making sure that there were guardrails on, making sure that the different agencies were talking to one another, because often they were not only in different buildings, you know, the right hand really didn’t know what the left hand was doing\u201d.
From the outside, these aims seem to be laudable. In Sweden, a similar initiative was taken with the formation of the Psychological Defence Agency<\/a> (MPF) in 2022. One difference to the US, it appears, was that the DHS was not particularly transparent about the DGB, as Jankowicz told us: \u201cThey didn’t really talk about those key pillars of what I had been assigned to do, you know, protecting fundamental rights, freedoms, et cetera\u201d. Moreover the key issue, \u201cto deal with disinformation about Russia \u2026 had become a lightning rod in American politics\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDemonised by the American Right<\/strong>
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Jankowicz\u2019s life turned upside down; she was harassed and received credible threats while being pregnant; \u201cpeople were saying things about my unborn child\u201d. A security consultant advised the family that they should leave their home, which they decided against, \u201cbecause as a pregnant lady, you just have too much stuff to bring with you\u201d. Jankowicz was targeted with a viciousness all the more potent because she was a woman just doing her job. Now, nearly three years later, the threats continue: \u201cEven after it became clear that Trump was going to win the election a couple of nights ago, I received a lot of messages on Twitter saying things like, we\u2019re going to deport you. I hope you answer for your anti-democratic actions, things like this. So there\u2019s a not insignificant part of the American electorate that believes that I did or had the intention to censor my fellow Americans. And that’s just not true\u201d. Entities like Fox News and congressional Republicans tried to profit off such lies, and \u201cnothing would make them happier than me just kind of retreating into the shadows and I refuse to do that. So that’s why I am undeterred\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUndeterred \u2013 the American Sunlight Project<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n