There are moments in public life when a single photograph can rewrite a person’s story in the blink of an eye. Last Friday, at the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, such a moment arrived amid chaos. Protesters stormed the hall and interrupted Nigel Farage’s speech, and what followed was an ugly, violent scene. Reports described punches being thrown, one person being hit with a crutch, and a woman having her hair pulled. In the confusion, a photograph was taken that would soon spiral across social media. It appeared to show a woman being attacked, with a…

1. The Hidden Life of Disinformation There is a strange and unsettling moment that many of us have experienced while scrolling through social media. A post appears—perhaps a dramatic headline, a grainy video, or an angry comment—that seems to confirm our worst fears about the world. We pause. We feel a surge of emotion. Maybe we share it, or maybe we simply keep scrolling, but the image lingers. What most of us do not realize in that moment is that we have just become part of something much larger than ourselves: a complex ecosystem of influence, manipulation, and unintended amplification.…