Session Type(s): Training
Training Tag(s): Other
Starts: Thursday, Jul. 13 2:30 PM (Central)
Ends: Thursday, Jul. 13 3:30 PM (Central)
Room: Williford C
As the abortion legal landscape shifts, anti-abortion actors are increasingly seizing the opportunity to spread disinformation to confuse and scare patients away from seeking abortions. This training will first help to define misinformation and disinformation, talk about what makes a piece of disinformation particularly convincing, and train attendees on identification, prevention and best practices to intervene both on and offline.
Taryn Abbassian is a 2012 political science graduate of Dickinson College where her interest and commitment to gender equity and LGBTQ+ advocacy began. After graduation, Taryn spent four years teaching in the UK, before returning home in the fall of 2016 to President Trump and a political environment that felt untenable. After coming to D.C. and earning a masters from George Washington University in Public Policy and Gender Studies in 2019, Taryn has gone on to work for political, policy and advocacy organizations in Washington D.C. like AAUW, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EMILY’s List, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. She currently serves as the Associate Research Director at NARAL, a non-profit that advocates for reproductive freedom and abortion access across the country. Her work focuses on abortion related disinformation, opposition research, and using strategic messaging based on qualitative research and polling to help shape the narrative nationally around abortion and sway voters to protect reproductive rights and freedoms.
Sawyeh is the associate director of advocacy research at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). She leads the organization’s opposition research, including studying the anti-abortion movement’s political and movement-based disinformation tactics. Prior to joining PPFA, Sawyeh spent six years in gun violence prevention research focusing on political violence, mass shootings, and hate-motivated violence. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from NYU where she studied public policy analysis and nonprofit management.