Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on March 4, 2026 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies for a conversation with Obama Scholar Valeria Kovtun and Tamar Mitts. Moderated by Elise Giuliano.
This event will bring together Obama Scholar Valeriia Kovtun and SIPA Professor Tamar Mitts for a timely conversation on how contemporary conflicts play out simultaneously through military force and the information environments that shape how events are understood. Drawing on Kovtun’s firsthand experience during Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Mitts’s extensive research on the role that digital media and emerging technologies play in conflict, the discussion will examine how information flows in contemporary media ecosystems shape public perceptions in moments of crisis. The event will also explore emerging frontiers in wartime propaganda, including the growing use of AI-generated content and the challenges of detecting and countering synthetic media. Kovtun and Mitts will reflect on what these dynamics mean for democratic and authoritarian societies alike and how governments and civil society can build greater resilience against information manipulation.
For over a decade, Valeria Kovtun has dedicated her work to advancing media education, shaping strategies against disinformation, and leveraging technology to safeguard societies from authoritarian threats. Her most transformative journey in this field began when she left London and the BBC to launch Ukraine’s first governmental media literacy program. What followed was three years of building from scratch. She founded and directed Filter, Ukraine’s national media literacy institution, an organization which designed and implemented public interventions that reached millions of Ukrainians daily, building resilience against disinformation at one of the most critical moments in the country’s history. She has advised UNDP, IREX, OSCE, Radio Free Europe, British Council, and Zinc Network on designing national programs for countering information threats at scale. Most recently, she led strategic partnerships at OpenMinds in London, delivering threat intelligence and response services to more than 30 governments and organizations. Her work focused on helping European and US partners understand and respond to information threats, in particular in contested and hard-to-access environments. Kovtun holds an MSc from London School of Economics and fellowships from Chevening and the UN. Currently, as an Obama Scholar at Columbia University, she is exploring how arts and innovation can be leveraged to strengthen democracies and build societal resilience worldwide.
Tamar Mitts is an Associate Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and a Faculty Member at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, the Institute of Global Politics, and the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and international politics. She studies how state and non-state actors strategically use media to influence public behavior in democracies and non-democratic contexts, how conflict processes are shaped by emerging technologies, and the role of identity in political violence and nonviolent activism. Mitts’s articles have been published, or are forthcoming, in top journals including the American Political Science Review, International Organization, PNAS, Journal of Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, among other outlets. Her new book, “Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism” (Princeton University Press, 2025), explains why militant and hate organizations flourish online despite global efforts to clamp down on harmful content on social media platforms.
Event Video
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