Sarah Oates is Associate Dean for Research and Professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. As a political scientist, her work focuses on how the media can support or subvert democracy in places as diverse as Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Oates has published many books, articles, chapters, and papers on various topics, including how the internet can challenge dictatorship, how election coverage varies in different countries, and how national media systems cover terrorism in distinctive ways. A former journalist, she has lived and taught in the United States, Scotland, and Russia.

Gordon Neil Ramsay is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. His work has covered political communication and disinformation, as well as media regulation and the effects of the decline of local journalism in democratic societies. He has worked in U.K. think tanks producing research on media legislation and regulation plurality, and co-founded the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power at King's College London. His recent publications have covered the media's role in elections, the effects of market concentration and economic pressures on local news performance, and the increasing vulnerability of news media to targeted disinformation.