Azza El-Masri is a Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for Media Engagement. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a journalist, disinformation expert, and digital security consultant that has worked with independent media organizations, human rights organizations, and journalism students across North Africa and Western Asia (NAWA) to develop and support open-source investigations and fact-checking projects. Her research interests sit at the intersection of media, technology and human rights. Particularly, she examines the political economy of disinformation in NAWA and tries to understand the effect of content moderation policies on Arab independent media, access to information, and free speech online.