Bret Schafer

Bret Schafer is a social media analyst and communications officer at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. He has a Master’s in Public Diplomacy from the University of Southern California, and a BS in Communications with a major in radio/television/film from Northwestern University. As an expert in computational propaganda, he has appeared in the New York Times, Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, and he has regularly been a guest on NPR and BBC radio. Prior to joining ASD, Bret spent more than ten years in the film industry, including stints as a development assistant at the Cartoon Network, a development producer at Citizen Skull Productions, and a freelance writer at Warner Brothers. He has also worked in Budapest as a radio host, and in Berlin as a semi-professional baseball player in Germany’s Bundesliga. He is the former editor-in-chief of Public Diplomacy Magazine, and his work has been published in the Chronicle of Social Change, LAist.com, and the Cipher Brief, among others. His regional interests are Russia and Central/Eastern Europe, and he previously interned in the Public Affairs Section at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia.