On Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol hoping to overturn the legitimate presidential election of Joe Biden. A year later, questions about the event—its origins in disinformation, its effect on the American political climate and its implications for the future of electoral democracy—remain urgent, researchers said last week at “The Capitol Coup One Year Later: How Research Can Assess and Counter Threats to Democracy.”
The two-day conference was jointly hosted by the George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics (IDDP) and University of North Carolina Center for Information, Technology and Public Life (CITAP).
“I believe that we as citizens and scholars can play a pivotal role in unpacking what happened a year ago and why, and envisioning a fair and just path forward,” IDDP director Rebekah Tromble said Thursday during the IDDP-hosted part of the conference.