Emma Briant Keynote Speaker

Emma Briant is an internationally-recognised expert, researcher and scholar of information warfare and propaganda. She has been named “one of the world’s leading experts in information wars” (Der Spiegel, 2023) and is a leading speaker on the challenge of contemporary online threats and how to respond to them.

Emma is Visiting Associate Professor (Research) at University of Notre Dame, in the United States, a Fellow at Bard College and Associate at University of Cambridge Centre for Financial Reporting & Accountability. The primary focus of Emma’s research is on contemporary propaganda and information warfare, its ethics and its governance in an age of mass-surveillance.

Emma played a central role in revealing the Cambridge Analytical scandal, through her role in multiple investigations, and has since advised several documentary films on the subject, including Oscar-shortlisted Netflix film ‘The Great Hack’, for which she was Senior Researcher, as well as ‘People You May Know’. Her recent work focuses on the ethics of influence operations, and explains how effective data and surveillance driven strategies.  She uncovers the industry that sells digital dark arts to private clients, politicians and governments, and reveals how it is used to shape our information environment and influence beliefs and behaviours.

She has authored several books: Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global Change (2015), which explores democracies adapting to digital age information warfare, Bad News for Refugees (2013), which examined UK political and media discourse on migration prior to Brexit, and her latest book, Routledge Handbook on the Influence Industry, with Vian Bakir (2024).  She also regularly contributes journalism and op-eds to major publications such as The Guardian, Wired, OCCRP and more.

Emma is known as “the woman exposing the propaganda puppet masters” (Index on Censorship, 2022).  As an expert in her field, she regularly advises and informs international enquiries and policymakers all over the world, including the US Congress, UK Parliament, Canadian Parliament and the European Parliament.  She has advised politicians, NGOs and Big Tech companies on the major threats of governments and the digital influence industry, including disinformation and contemporary influence operations.