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ISIS and the Digital War


Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 11:30 a.m.

Newseum

555 Pennsylvania Ave NW

Washington, D.C. 20001

Please enter through the C St. entrance

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also known as ISIS) has proved itself to be most adept at recruiting members and targeting adversaries through social media. On October 21st, Voice of America and the Newseum Institute will take a deep dive into the group's use of propaganda in the televised special: ISIS and the Digital War.

VOA Reporter Mil Arcega and Newseum Institute COO Gene Policinski will lead the one-hour forum, exploring ways to cover the ISIS narrative.

Panelists include:

Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne is president of AMAR U.S. and the Chairman of the AMAR International Charitable Foundation. She travels regularly to Iraq and is currently leading the charity’s work to help and support many hundreds of thousands of the 3.1 million internally displaced people (IDPs) forced from their homes by the ISIS invasion. She is a World Health Organization Envoy for Health, and Honorary Adviser to the Prime Minister of Iraq in the field of Health. Baroness Nicholson served as a member of the British House of Commons from 1987 to 1997, when she became a Life Peer in the House of Lords.

Michael Weiss is a well-known American journalist specializing in Syria and the Middle East. His work led him to co-author the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. The book explains how ISIS evolved from a nearly defeated Iraqi insurgent group into a jihadi army of international volunteers who have conquered territory equal to the size of Great Britain. Currently based in New York City, Weiss serves as a senior editor at The Daily Beast. He also edits The Interpreter, an online translation and analysis journal devoted to all things Russian and Ukrainian.

Lorenzo Vidino, Ph.D., is an academic and security expert who specializes in Islamism and political violence in Europe and North America. Since April 2015, he has been the director of the Program on Extremism at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. He is the author of several books and frequent articles on conflict and terrorism. A native of Milan, Italy, he holds a law degree from the University of Milan Law School and a doctorate in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Hosts:

Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. A veteran multimedia journalist, he also writes, lectures and is interviewed regularly on First Amendment issues. Policinski, a founding editor of USA Today, oversees all programs of the Newseum Institute and is also a longtime proponent of diversity in journalism as an essential characteristic of a free press. He speaks and writes regularly on news gathering and reporting, newsroom diversity, and journalism ethics.

Mil Arcega is an award-winning anchor/ reporter for Voice of America. Originally from the Philippines, he grew up in Canada where he began his career in journalism. In 1997, he moved to Washington, D.C., to become a general assignment reporter and weekend anchor of NBC4. He currently hosts VOA’s The Correspondents, and covers global economics.

RSVP to publicrelations@voanews.com by Friday, October 16, 2015

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