Patricia Campos Mello

Patricia Campos Mello is a special reporter for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. She holds a degree in Journalism from USP and a master’s degree from New York University (NYU). She has won several national and international awards, including the International Press Freedom Award, granted in 2019 by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Vladimir Herzog Special Prize and the King of Spain Digital Journalism Award. As a correspondent, she covered the US elections from 2008 to 2020, the Indian elections in 2014, 2019 and 2024, the war in Afghanistan in 2009 and the 11/9 attacks in New York. She has been to Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Libya, Lebanon, Ukraine and Kenya several times reporting on wars and their refugees. These experiences resulted in the publication of her first book, Lua de mel em Kobane (Companhia das Letras, 2017), which deals with a Syrian couple surviving the siege of the Islamic State. She was an associate researcher at Columbia University between 2021 and 2022, with a project of mapping political disinformation in the context of the 2022 Brazilian election. In addition, she published A máquina do ódio: notas de uma repórter sobre fake news e violência digital (Companhia das Letras, 2020), a bestseller that deals with the use of social media to manipulate voters in Brazil, India and the United States. She is currently writing a book on freedom of expression, technology and journalism, which will also be released by Companhia das Letras.