Samantha Stanley is Associate Director of Research and Program Management at Brown University’s School of Public Health, where she manages the Information Futures Lab. Her teaching and research centers around the shifting boundaries between journalism and public relations — something she believes both audiences and practitioners should understand. Samantha has taught students and trained educators in news literacy students in the US and Asia. She earned a Master of Journalism and her PhD in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong.

Yvonne T. Chua is an associate professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines. A longtime journalist, she has been associated with four fact-checking initiatives: Vera Files Fact Check, FactRakers, Tsek.ph and the Philippine Fact Checker Incubator project. Yvonne has done research on disinformation, hate speech, dangerous speech, and media and democracy. She is also a member of the government’s Commission on Higher Education Technical Committee on Journalism which proposes standards for journalism education in the Philippines.

Distinguished journalist and Nieman Fellowship recipient (Harvard University), Wahyu Dhyatmika is the CEO of Tempo Digital. He joined the Tempo newsroom in 2001 as the East Java correspondent and served as editor-in-chief in  2019-2021.

Wahyu believes in journalism as a conversation between the public and the newsroom and keenly experiments with different forms of citizen reporting (crowdsourcing), subscription and membership in media, as well as new methods and formats for data driven investigative reporting to better serve the public interest in the digital age.

He led the Panama Papers reporting in Indonesia in 2015, and in 2017, along with several other editor-in-chiefs of independent media in Indonesia, initiated IndonesiaLeaks.id; a platform for whistle-blowers to securely send documents or insights of possible hidden scandals to newsrooms across the country.

In 2018, Wahyu was involved in the creation of CekFakta.com, the first collaborative fact-checking initiative in Indonesia. He also started  a fact-checking project at Tempo, a community reporting project called Tempo Witness and initiated a platform for public complaints called Lapor Tempo.

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Supinya Klangnarong is Co-founder of the fact-checking platform COFACT Thailand, and
Co-founder of Digital​ ​Thinkers Forum, a Bangkok-based Think​Tank​ on​ Digital​ Rights & Literacy. She is an honorary member of the Ethics Committee of The National​ Press Council of Thailand and a policy board member of Thailand Consumers Council (TCC). In addition, Supinya is former Commissioner​ of National​ Broadcast​ and Telecomm​unication Commission​ (NBTC)​ in Thailand between 2011 to 2017.

Supinya is Ashoka Fellow since 2004 and Eisenhower Fellow in 2007 as a long-time advocate for media rights and quality journalism, digital rights and citizenship, Supinya started off her media advocacy work as Co-Ordinator, then Secretary-General of now-defunct Campaign for Popular Media Reform, when Thailand’s major reform kicked start after the May 1993 popular democracy uprising, then a Co-founder of Thai Netizen Network, Internet freedom advocacy group emerged after military coup in 2006.

In 2011, she decided to run in a candidacy for NBTC, which she was selected by the Senate to be the youngest and only female commissioner (civil society representation) in Thailand’s broadcast and telecom regulator, NBTC, to influence the democratization of policy and regulation of the country’s state-controlled broadcasting sector.

Dr Shangyuan Wu is a lecturer and media researcher at the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. Her research areas of interest are journalism in the digital age, with a focus on automated, data, and immersive journalism, as well as global journalism studies, the political economy of communication, media and democracy, and comparative media analysis. She has published in the peer-reviewed journals of Digital Journalism, Journalism, Journalism Studies, Information, Communication and Society, and Journalism Practice, among others.

Dr Wu has a background in journalism, having worked previously as a senior broadcast journalist and presenter at Singapore’s national broadcaster Mediacorp, covering the areas of politics, defense and education.

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Santi Indra Astuti is a lecturer at the Faculty of Communication Science, Islamic University of Bandung (UNISBA), Indonesia, and has taught media literacy and research methodology since 2005. In 2016, she joined MAFINDO (Masyarakat Anti Fitnah Indonesia), a community-based organization focussed on  fact-checking and reducing information disorder in society.

In 2017, Santi co-founded JAPELIDI (Indonesia Digital Network of Digital Literacy Activists), which has to date sheltered 211 members, of which 80% are lecturers from 99 universities. Santi’s current focus is managing TULAR NALAR, a digital literacy project aimed to build critical thinking skills within education communities (2020), the elderly (2022), and youth (2022).

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Phan Van Tu is a lecturer at the faculty of Journalism and Communication, Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanity. His 25-year career in journalism spans work as a reporter, editor, and manager for print, radio, television, and digital news outlets in Vietnam. He has participated in a variety of professional journalism courses from international organizations like IMMF, SIDA, and WAN-IFRA. Mr. Tu is currently focusing on training for television, new media, and social media students.

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Associate Professor Pijitra Suppasawatgul has over 20 years of experience in internet governance, digital literacy, data analytics in political science as well as data journalism. She is Head of Journalism Department and Lecturer in the Faculty of Mass Communications at Chulalongkorn University and Vice Dean for Social Engagement and Academic Service. A graduate of London School of Economic and Political Science (LSE) and Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, her current research focuses on big data analytics and politics in social networks as well as social media governance.

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Pijitra has been honored by the National Research Council of Thailand for her research on hate speech and sits on Facebook’s Steering Committee in APAC. She is a founder of media and data incubators, Data Hatch and C-CUBE with the aim to build a greater ecosystem for the media and journalism industry. Pijitra also spearheaded the 333 Open Data Campaign to force the Thai Government to be transparent about COVID-19 vaccines.

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Kanchan Kaur is Dean, Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media (IIJNM), Bangalore. She is also an India assessor for the International Fact-Checking Network which certifies fact-checking websites. She started her career in journalism by reporting the city of Bangalore for various small newspapers before moving on to the bigger ones like the Indian Express, Deccan Herald and The Gulf News. She has driven IIJNM’s emphasis on Multimedia and works on spreading news literacy.  

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As the newly appointed Associate Director, Anne brings her expertise in leading the strategic growth of international verification projects to RMIT FactLab. RMIT FactLab is a research hub dedicated to debunking misinformation online and developing critical awareness about its origins and spread. RMIT FactLab also works hand in hand with RMIT ABC Fact Check.

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Anne spent nearly four years with verification experts First Draft (closed and re-formed in 2022 as the Information Futures Lab, Brown University). Anne now also heads up RMIT FactLab's CrossCheck initiative which carries on in APAC the mission of First Draft's collaborative CrossCheck projects, and other research in partnership with the Information Futures Lab. Anne is a subcommittee board member for Australia's first misinformation and disinformation regulatory code enacted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and was co-chief investigator on behalf of peak industry body DIGI during the code's development. Anne's industry experience includes successful anchoring and reporting roles at CNN International, Bloomberg TV, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Anne was an Assistant Professor of Practice and Head of Broadcast at the University of Hong Kong where she also helped to lead news literacy training and consulted for UNESCO.

David Chak leads the media literacy and STEM education work in Arus Academy, a social enterprise he co-founded with 3 other of his friends. A graduate from McGill University, Canada, David obtained his post graduate diploma in education from Northern University, Malaysia.

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He joined the Teach for Malaysia programme and worked as a public school teacher in a high needs school for close to 7 years before leaving the service. In 2020, with a gracious grant, David and his team at Arus, alongside 15 teachers and 7 media industry mentors kickstarted the award-winning Media Education For All movement that has since trained close to 10,000 teachers in integrating media literacy education in classroom subjects.

Masato Kajimoto, PhD, is the founding director of ANNIE. He is also an associate professor of practice at HKU Journalism at the University of Hong Kong. He specialises in news literacy education, mis/disinformation ecosystem research, fact-checking practice, and press freedom studies, with a strong focus on countries in the Asia-Pacific. He received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Hong Kong. Before beginning a career in teaching and research, he worked as a reporter for CNN International.

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Syed Nazakat is an award-winning Indian journalist, media entrepreneur, founder and CEO of DataLEADS, a digital media company he founded to promote the democratization of information at scale. He leads DataLEADS in New Delhi, as well as oversees its outreach across Asia. It is one of the world’s biggest fact-checking and media literacy training initiatives and is supported by Google News Initiative.

Syed also founded a unique collaboration platform between journalists, scientists and doctors called First Check to address rising health misinformation. He is a board member of The New Humanitarian (Geneva) and GIJN (USA) and has been twice a jury member for the Global Shining Light Award, a unique award which honours investigative journalism in a developing or transitioning country.  

Over the years, Syed has trained and mentored hundreds of journalists, media educators and students in more than 10 countries across Asia in specially designed data boot camps.  As a journalist, he has worked in senior positions at different media organisations,has over 18 years of experience as a journalist and has reported from more than 30 countries. Syed Nazakat’s work has earned him global recognition and awards. He holds a B.Sc degree from India and a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines.