Dr. Ana Julia Bernardi is Director of Projects and a member of the Executive Board at Instituto Democracia em Xeque (DX). She joined DX in 2022 as a researcher, and became Director of Projects in 2023. She coordinates the System of Alerts Against Disinformation and Attacks on the Superior Courts (SADITS), which since 2022 has delivered over 21,000 alerts and weekly evidence to the judiciary. Ana Julia works with the rest of DX’s team on initiatives connecting information integrity with climate change and public health and has trained electoral officials, public servants, journalists, and community leaders, combining academic rigor, innovation, and coalition-building. Prior to joining DX, she worked as a researcher at Instituto Liberdade Digital and served as a consultant on projects related to disinformation, political education, youth engagement, and civil society strengthening. From 2013 to 2016, she was a project assistant at the Center for International Studies on Government (CEGOV).
She currently teaches in the Graduate Program in Political Science at FESPSP and in the undergraduate Public Policy Management program at FIPEEES.
Organization vision: To defend democracy by building cross-sector coalitions that safeguard information integrity, counter disinformation, and strengthen resilient and inclusive civic ecosystems.
Instituto Democracia em Xeque (DX) expands Brazil’s capacity to counter disinformation, hate speech, and violent political extremism by combining applied research, technological innovation, and strategic communication. Created in 2021 as a project focused on data-driven insights, DX became a nationwide institute in 2023 with a mission to protect democratic institutions and strengthen civic resilience.
DX integrates technology, evidence production, training, and coalition building. At its core is an independent data lake that supports large-scale monitoring of social networks. It also powers SADITS—the System of Alerts Against Disinformation and Attacks on the Superior Courts—which provides real-time alerts and weekly analysis to the judiciary. DX also trains electoral officials, journalists, civil servants, and community leaders, building institutional capacity to recognize and respond to emergent threats.
Beyond elections, DX convenes and co-coordinates multi-sector networks such as the Information Integrity and Climate Change Network and the Socio-Environmental Panel, bridging disinformation research with climate, environmental, and public health challenges. By transforming data into collective action, DX connects institutions, civil society, and academia to reinforce democratic resilience in Brazil and across the Global South.
