Tessa Knight
Tessa Knight is a research associate for the Sub-Saharan Africa region at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) based in South Africa. Tessa worked as a news journalist for two South African media companies before joining the DFRLab where she discovered her passion for tracking disinformation and the spread of digital propaganda on the African continent.
As a research associate for DFRLab’s sub-Saharan African research unit, Tessa is committed to increasing awareness around digital propaganda, and working with other researchers, journalists and policy-makers to come up with uniquely African solutions to both local and international disinformation targeting the continent.
April 2021
Ethiopian diaspora groups organize click-to-tweet Tigray campaigns amid information scarcity
Social media campaigns promoted pro-government and anti-conflict narratives to capture attention from an international audience.
February 2021
Prominent Ugandan news websites implicated in government-aligned social media campaign
Websites implicated in Facebook takedown that involved government employees engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior.
February 2021
Weaponized: How rumors about COVID-19’s origins led to a narrative arms race
A joint research project from the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the Associate Press on information environments during the first six months of COVID-19.
