Carole Cadwalladr

Carole Cadwalladr is an award-winning investigative journalist who has spent two decades uncovering the hidden forces shaping politics and technology.

At The Guardian and The Observer, Cadwalladr became known for her reporting on the Cambridge Analytica–Facebook scandal, which revealed how personal data was harvested and weaponised to influence elections, including the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential campaign. Her work exposed the risks of mass data manipulation, prompting a global conversation about privacy, consent, and the ethics of digital campaigning. This story was later featured in the Netflix documentary The Great Hack, which follows the scandal through the experiences of Cadwalladr, US academic David Carroll, and former Cambridge Analytica employee Brittany Kaiser, illustrating the structural challenges of data rights and digital democracy.

Cadwalladr has since identified a new form of power she calls the “broligarchy”: the alignment of Silicon Valley tech companies with autocratic regimes, creating unprecedented influence over information, politics, and society. Her reporting has won the Orwell Prize for political journalism and the Polk Award, and she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist with the New York Times in 2019. Through her writing and TED Talks, Carole Cadwalladr shows that technology is not neutral. Those who control data control power. She warns that AI, mass surveillance, and the commercialisation of information are reshaping democracy and everyday life, often without public awareness or consent.

In 2025, Cadwalladr co-founded The Nerve, an independent, all-women journalist-owned publication. Frustrated by the limitations of mainstream media, she and her team are building a newsroom that combines investigative rigour with cultural reporting, engaging readers in a more transparent and accountable form of journalism.

Despite legal challenges and public attacks, Carole continues to report and campaign on issues at the intersection of technology, politics, and society. Her work is both a warning and a call to recognise the systems of influence shaping our world, question who holds power, and support independent journalism as a vital check on authority.