Is Social Media Dismantling Democracy?

Join reporters Sheera Frenkel, Jeff Horwitz, and Steven Lee Myers in conversation on political messaging and misinformation in the era of social media, and the government’s role in both protecting free speech and regulating online forums.

About the Speakers

Sheera Frenkel covers cybersecurity from San Francisco for the New York Times. Previously, she spent over a decade in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent, reporting for BuzzFeed, NPR, The Times of London, and McClatchy Newspapers. Frenkel was part of the team of investigative journalists recognized as 2019 Finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. The team also won the George Polk Award for National Reporting and the Gerald Loeb Award for Investigative Reporting. She is the co-author of An Ugly Truth: Facebook’s Battle for Domination, a New York Times and International best seller.

is an investigative technology reporter for Reuters in San Francisco, and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, American Banker, Legal Times, The San Bernardino Sun and The Washington City Paper. He was a Knight Bagehot fellow at Columbia University, and has won Loeb and Polk awards, as well as the Christopher J Welles Memorial Prize and the New York Press Club's Gold Keyboard. He lives in Oakland with his wife.

Steven Lee Myers joined The New York Times in 1989 and has worked in New York, Washington, Moscow (twice), Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul, including four stints as bureau chief. Myers contributed to the Times coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2021. He is the author of a biography of Russia’s president, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin, published in 2015.

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Host or Publisher Mechanics' Institute