Dana Coester is founder and editor in chief for the digital media outlet 100 Days in Appalachia, which received a national Edward R. Murrow Award for coverage on extremism and political violence. She is passionate about community media, the preservation of local press freedoms, and founded the Rural Digital Resilience Project to address the unique issues that America’s rural communities and local journalists face on and offline. Coester is also a professor at West Virginia University School of Journalism and Communications. Coester received a 2023-24 JustFilms award for her documentary film Raised by Wolves, was named a Benedum Distinguished Scholar and received a Media Democracy Fund "Unicorn" award. Coester serves in a leadership role for the IWMF's Coalition Against Online Violence, and has been an invited speaker at the Aspen Festival of Ideas, Newsgeist North America, the Council on Foreign Relations, among others, and has led work cited in testimonies before two congressional committees.

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