Renée DiResta is the Technical Research Manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of adversarial abuse in current information technologies. She studies many ways that people attempt to manipulate, harass, or target others online. Sometimes that's influence operations, sometimes it's spam and scams, child safety issues, or novel ways of abusing generative AI technology. The internet is an ecosystem, and these things are interconnected: new technologies transform old problems. A lot of Renée's work focuses on rumors and propaganda, and in understanding how narratives spread across social and media networks. Often we talk about this primarily as a problem of platform algorithms, but people—all of us—play a big role in determining what goes viral. Renée is interested in the interplay between influencers, algorithms, and online crowds. Renée is also interested in the intersection of technology and trust, whether that's related to the dynamics of health misinformation, the spread of conspiracy theories, or the ways in which propagandists exploit societal divisions.

Renée does research into novel and rapidly-developing problems, then communicate findings both to the public and to those best positioned to mitigate them. Over the years Renée has briefed world leaders and government bodies, advised Congress, the State Department, and myriad academic, civil society, and business organizations on the mechanics of online manipulation in its many forms, including computational propaganda, conspiracy theories, terrorist activity, and state-sponsored information warfare.