Olga Irisova

Guest Speaker

January 21, 2019 – July 19, 2019

Professional Affiliation

Political Analyst, Cofounder, and Editor-in-Chief, "Riddle"

Expert Bio

Olga Irisova is a political analyst, Cofounder, and Editor-in-Chief at Riddle, an online journal of Russian affairs. Her work focuses mostly on Russian media policy. Currently she is an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's German Chancellor Fellow. In 2019 she was a Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution with the Kennan Institute. From 2015 to 2018, she was Senior Editor at Intersection and Analyst at the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding. She is also the editor and co-author of the book A Successful Failure: Russia after Crime(a) (2017, Warsaw). In addition, she is an alumni of the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe. She is a Specialist in International Relations from Udmurt State University (2011) and also received her Master’s degree from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (2013).

Wilson Center Project

Improving Western Strategy of Combating Disinformation Campaigns: Cognitive Science Instead of Technical Debunking as a Key Solution to the Problem

Project Summary

The emphasis on debunking distracts attention and financial resources of Western countries from a real solution to the problem of disinformation, because this approach doesnt take into account human psychology, which influences why people believe fake content and why exposing of fakes can't convince a person with pre-existing bias (moreover, some media studies showed that debunking initiatives contribute to viral spread of exposed disinformation). Western countries need to revise the existing model of combating disinformation, paying more attention to psychological, cognitive aspects, which will ultimately help to develop an optimal model enabling developing of critical and analytical thinking among population.