Nina Jankowicz is a researcher specializing in state-sponsored disinformation and gendered online abuse. In April 2021, the Biden Administration tapped Jankowicz to lead a new group in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called the Disinformation Governance Board. The board would coordinate DHS efforts to highlight trustworthy information about high-stakes issues like COVID response measures and cybersecurity events. Within 24 hours of the board’s announcement, prominent far-right media outlets and influencers attacked Jankowicz as a threat to democracy whose work would inevitably distort the truth and censor free speech.
Jankowicz faced online assaults more ferocious, more threatening, and more damaging than any abuse she had faced in the past. First was the cyber-mob’s grotesque distortion of her work. Posters accused her of spreading disinformation rather than combating it. Videos were doctored to make it seem that she thought certain people should be able to edit others’ tweets, which she had never said. Next came the publication of her contact information, followed by threats. Attackers sent frightening emails, texts, voicemails, and letters—the message was that she would be raped and killed. At the time, Jankowicz was nine months pregnant with her first child.
Rather than defending the board, the Biden Administration shut it down, and Jankowicz resigned. Security consultants advised Jankowicz and her husband to relocate, an impossibility given that Jankowicz was due to give birth imminently. Fox News television guests remarked with glee that their “side” had taken her scalp and “got her bounced.”