The American Sunlight Education Initiative’s programming spans two purposes:

• Expose deceptive information practices and the networks and money that drive them. Through rigorous research of open sources, the Initiative documents and details coordinated efforts to manipulate the information space.

  • The American Sunlight Education Initiative pursues this research no matter the actor spreading disinformation. We believe that no matter a person’s or organization’s political affiliation, disinformation is an equal-opportunity threat to democracy.

  • All of The American Sunlight Education Initiative’s research:

    • Is conducted using open sources,

    • Is made publicly available on our website,

    • Serves the purpose of educating the public about deceptive information practices so they can make informed choices in their daily lives.

• Educate the public about the threats we face and the effects of disinformation on society. Illustrative examples of this work would include:

  • Toolkits and events: The American Sunlight Education Initiative pursues partnerships with other like-minded organizations to educate the public about the real world impact of disinformation and the importance of work being done to protect against it. The American Sunlight Education Initiative also creates publicly available toolkits to build public resilience to recognize and resist disinformation campaigns.

  • Public education campaigns to explain to citizens the dangers of AI-enabled disinformation during natural disasters, public safety emergencies, and other high-stakes events and crises.
    

Project Director Bio:

Nina Jankowicz is an internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization, one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, and the author of two books: How to Lose the Information War (2020), and How to Be A Woman Online (2022). Jankowicz has advised governments, international organizations, and tech companies, and testified before the US Congress, UK Parliament, and European Parliament.

Jankowicz knows what it is like to be attacked for defending the truth. In 2022, Jankowicz was appointed to lead the Disinformation Governance Board, an intra-agency best practices and coordination entity at the Department of Homeland Security; she resigned the position after a sustained disinformation campaign caused the Biden Administration to abandon the project.

From 2017-2022, Jankowicz held fellowships at the Wilson Center, where she led accessible, actionable research about the effects of disinformation on women and freedom of expression around the world. She advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship in 2016-17. Early in her career, she managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute.