Disinformation, ‘Fake News’ and Influence Campaigns on Twitter

About the project

Commissioned by the Knight Foundation, this project investigates how disinformation campaigns operated on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The foundation, a major American nonprofit supporting journalism, media innovation, and informed civic engagement, funded the research and public dissemination of findings around one of the most pressing issues in digital democracy: the spread of misinformation and the influence of bot networks on public opinion.

The project focused on visualizing key patterns in how fake news sources, coordinated actors, and foreign influence operations—particularly those attributed to the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)—disseminated propaganda and manipulated discourse during the electoral period.

My role

I led the team of developers responsible for building the digital experience, working in close collaboration with the design team led by Giorgia Lupi. My role included harmonizing the technical and design perspectives, aligning interactive development with data storytelling, and ensuring performance and visual fidelity across devices. The project required close integration of complex datasets, layered interactions, and an elegant interface capable of communicating intricate dynamics to a broad audience.

Outcome

The result was an interactive, visually compelling long-form published on the Knight Foundation’s platform. The piece combined investigative narrative, dynamic visualizations, and state-of-the-art web technologies to communicate the scope and impact of online disinformation. It successfully made abstract and technically dense topics accessible to the public and policy stakeholders, reinforcing the Knight Foundation’s mission to support transparency and civic education in the digital age.