Brandy Zadrozny

I'm a senior reporter based in New York covering the internet — a big subject that spans the beats of politics, tech and extremism. I have reported revelatory stories on online communities and influencers that were — often secretively — shaping media, culture and politics in the U.S. My reporting interrogates these communities as well as the online activities of far-right politicians and extremists, the mis- and disinformation that powers their movements, and the people and organizations who profit.

My reporting depends on people who share their stories with me. These stories have brought readers to a conservative Oklahoma town's City Hall as councilmembers fought to expel a white supremacist, to the bedside of a woman who trusted a Facebook group instead of doctors to deliver her baby, to a mountain hike with anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6 with a man who had been radicalized on QAnon forums, and to an armed standoff between neighbors over a conspiracy theory that spilled off the internet and onto a rural Washington town's Main Street. My six-episode podcast explored a single conspiracy theory and its lasting impact on an Alabama nurse and the wider world.