Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is delighted to announce today, ahead of World Press Freedom Day, that Singapore-based investigative journalist Shibani Mahtani is the recipient of the 2026 Shorenstein Journalism Award for excellence in coverage of the Asia-Pacific region. The award recognizes Mahtani for her original, powerful reporting that has brought critical attention to the erosion of democracy and human rights across the region, particularly in Southeast Asia. She will receive the award at a public ceremony in the coming autumn quarter.

Until February 2026, Mahtani was an international investigative correspondent for the Washington Post. Her accountability-driven investigations across the Asia-Pacific have focused on the expanding economic and political influence of an increasingly assertive China and its implications in the region. Her work includes, among others, reports linking powerful criminal networks in Myanmar to the Chinese state and exposing brutal scam compounds in the country; examining Beijing’s influence on Chinese-language media in Singapore and its efforts to wield influence in Indonesia and elsewhere through vocational programs; scrutinizing China’s cross-national repression of Uyghur Muslims, especially in Central and Southeast Asia; and investigating how its promise of prosperity brought Laos debt and distress.

Mahtani joined the Washington Post in 2018 as the Southeast Asia and Hong Kong Bureau Chief. She reported extensively from Myanmar, the Philippines, Laos, and other parts of the region. Most notably, she chronicled China’s subjugation of Hong Kong, from the explosive protests in 2019, triggered by Beijing’s proposal to extradite locals to the mainland, through the systematic crushing of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, to the dismantling of the city’s autonomy and the many ways it is changing.

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Her searing coverage of Hong Kong’s struggle includes a multimedia investigative report into Hong Kong police misconduct during the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations, for which she earned a Human Rights Press Award, and an exclusive on the alleged torture of a key prosecution witness in Hong Kong’s highest-profile trial of pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai. Mahtani continued to pursue that story, most recently reporting on Lai’s 20-year prison sentence, even after losing her job when the Washington Post sharply reduced its International team as part of mass layoffs.

Mahtani is also the co-author of the 2023 book, Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy, a narrative history of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement that explores it through the eyes of people on the ground, culminating in the 2019 mass protests and Beijing’s crackdown. 

Before joining the Washington Post, she was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and reported from Singapore, Myanmar, and Chicago.

“Shibani Mahtani’s journalism is defined by a courageous and relentless pursuit of speaking truth to power,” said APARC Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui. “Her work exemplifies the vital role of investigative reporting: to expose complex systems of repression and give voice to those who have been silenced. We are proud to honor her outstanding journalism with the Shorenstein Award.”

Sponsored and presented annually by APARC, the Shorenstein Award recognizes journalists and news media outlets that leverage a deep knowledge of Asian societies to share crucial insights with a global audience. The award carries a $10,000 cash prize and honors the legacy of APARC’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. It also demonstrates APARC’s commitment to journalism that persistently and courageously seeks accuracy, deep reporting, and nuanced coverage in an age when attacks are regularly launched against independent news media, fact-based truth, and those who tell it.

The selection committee for the award praised Mahtani’s investigations as groundbreaking and revelatory, noting that, in her coverage of Hong Kong, she has broken stories others would not – or could not – report.

The committee members are William Dobson, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy; Anna Fifield, a journalist and foreign affairs analyst, non-resident fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and recipient of the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award; James Hamilton, vice provost for undergraduate education, the Hearst Professor of Communication, and director of the Stanford Journalism Program, Stanford University; Louisa Lim, associate professor, Audio-Visual Journalism Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne; and Raju Narisetti, partner and global leader at McKinsey Global Publishing, McKinsey & Company.

Twenty-four winners previously received the Shorenstein Award. Recent honorees include Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for the New York Times; Emily Feng, international correspondent for NPR covering China, Taiwan, and more; Netra News, Bangladesh's premier independent media outlet; The Caravan, India's premier magazine of long-form journalism; and Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of the Philippines-based news organization Rappler.

Information about the 2026 Shorenstein Journalism Award ceremony celebrating Mahtahni will be forthcoming in the autumn quarter.

Introduction and Contribution:

Wars have wide-ranging effects on the political attitudes and behaviors of citizens and elites. For example, European leaders were pressured to make democratic reforms and build large welfare states during World War II in order to stabilize their countries and encourage wartime sacrifice. After the 9/11 attacks and the initial Afghanistan invasion, George W. Bush’s approval ratings soared to 90%.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has been one of the defining wars of this century. Its consequences for the politics of both countries — such as Ukrainian national unity or the repression of Russian dissidents — are beginning to be understood. Yet it is less clear how the war has affected third-party states. In light of Russia’s imperial ambitions, as well as Ukraine’s need for international support to combat a regional hegemon, this is a pressing issue.

Leaders of third-party states have responded to the war in a range of ways, including imposing sanctions on Russia and mediating between the two countries. Wars also affect how rulers communicate with their citizens: they may be motivated to emphasize their shared connections with either warring party, their need for national self-reliance in a hostile international system, and so on.

In “Between wars and words,” Ana Paula Pellegrino, Benjamin R. Burnley, and Laia Balcells show that leaders of third-party states increased their nationalist rhetoric on X (formerly known as Twitter) after the invasion. The authors analyze over 10,000 tweets from the heads of 130 states both before and after the invasion, mapping these along a nationalist-cosmopolitan spectrum. The effects of Russia’s invasion on nationalist tweets were strongest among North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and weaker among members of the pro-Russia Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

“Between wars and words” provides evidence that leaders react to wars in similar ways as do masses, whose sense of national identity tends to increase during periods of global uncertainty and conflict. As politicians increasingly use X to communicate, a more precise understanding of their tweets before and after major conflicts may help social scientists better understand their beliefs and threat perceptions. 

Methodology:

The authors collect tweets from the 14 days before and after the invasion using an unsupervised learning algorithm called GloVe. This process is diagrammed in Fig. 1 below. GloVe identifies relationships between words by analyzing how often they appear together, grouping together words with similar meanings. This enables the authors to code each tweet according to its topic and sentiment (e.g., positive vs. negative).
 

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To code the level of nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, the authors employ the Concept Mover’s Distance (CMD) approach. CMD measures how closely the words in each tweet align with sets of ‘anchor terms’ representing each concept, placing tweets along a continuum between the two. Briefly, nationalism refers to a set of beliefs about the reality and value of nations, the obligations that members of a nation have to one another, and the right of that nation to determine its political affairs, whether as its own state or within an existing state. By contrast, cosmopolitanism is the view that all humans, irrespective of their national memberships, ought to be seen as part of a single world (kosmos) community. Returning to CMD, nationalist tweets are those that align with anchor terms such as ‘pride, glory, patriot, forefathers, homeland,’ and ‘heritage.’ Cosmopolitan anchors include ‘cooperation, humanity, multilateral,’ and ‘universal.’ 

Importantly, nationalistic tweets need not bear an obvious relationship to (inter)national security — the authors hypothesize that Russia’s invasion merely increased nationalist rhetoric, not rhetoric of a specific kind. For example, 10 days after the invasion, Bolivian President Luis Alberto Arce Catacora tweeted, “In 2019, the glorious Alteño people once again showed us their courage and love for our country.” Conversely, 12 days prior to the invasion, Argentine President Alberto Fernández espoused several cosmopolitan sentiments when he tweeted: “With the logic of multilateralism, Argentina has discussed with Russia the possibility of deepening financial assistance and increasing bilateral investment and trade between the two countries.” 

Findings:

The authors show that Russia’s invasion did significantly increase nationalist rhetoric by third-party heads of state, whether or not one controls for topic and sentiment. As an example of this, consider Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer: Three days prior to the invasion, he tweeted, “Austria continues to rely on diplomacy and de-escalation to prevent war. The OSCE…is the appropriate framework.” On the day of the invasion, by contrast, Nehammer tweeted “I promise that I will do everything to protect the people who live in Austria.” Other international leaders, such as Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau, tweeted out more cosmopolitan statements about the importance of collectively pressuring Putin and respecting international law.
 

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Why might an international war prompt the leaders of third-party states to use more nationalist rhetoric? The authors provide a number of hypotheses. For one, wars lead to feelings of uncertainty, and nationalist rhetoric by elites can afford citizens a sense of safety. Third parties might also make nationalist statements to signal their support of (or opposition to) one of the belligerent parties; for example, “our proud nation will not stand idly by as Russia attacks Ukraine.”

Although the invasion increased nationalist discourse on average, these effects are driven primarily by the behavior of NATO members. This is likely because the alliance has historically taken a strong stand against Russian aggression. As mentioned above, CSTO members did not tweet in a more nationalistic way, nor did leaders of states with histories of territorial armed conflicts resembling the Russo-Ukrainian War.
 

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*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

For Oleksii Movchan, a member of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament) and deputy chair of the parliamentary committee on economic development, his focus is on expanding financing tools for reconstruction. As part of a project he began during his 2025 SU-DD fellowship, he is drafting legislation to reform municipal bond regulations, aimed at increasing the participation of local governments in securities and debt markets and attracting additional resources for rebuilding Ukraine. To accomplish this work, he has relied on the Problem-Solving Framework he learned at Stanford, and shares that his experience in the SU-DD program made him more confident in his values and encouraged him to “stand on [his] principles and values of integrity, openness, and respect to human rights and democracy.” By strengthening municipal access to capital, his work seeks to support infrastructure recovery while reinforcing transparent financial governance.

Maria Golub, a senior political and policy advisor working on EU and NATO integration, is developing a national Coalition for Recovery — an inclusive, cross-sectoral platform designed to unify Ukraine’s defense, reconstruction, and reform agendas. With Ukraine balancing the demands of war and reconstruction, Golub’s 2025 SU-DD project aims to ensure that recovery planning connects security, governance, and innovation rather than treating them as separate tracks. Currently in a pilot, her proposals have already informed the government's 2026 recovery and resilience planning process.

At the regional level, Mykhailo Pavliuk, vice-chairman of the Chernivtsi Oblast (state) legislature in Ukraine, is actively implementing reforms to advance self-government and deepen Ukraine’s decentralization process. His work, initiated during his time at Stanford in 2023, focuses on strengthening “consolidated, self-sufficient communities” by developing political, financial, infrastructure, and social strategies that can be carried out locally, including cross-border regional initiatives in Chernivtsi. He said the most important element is “supporting the potential of people at the local level through the activities of advisory bodies, consultations, and modeling of joint decisions,” bringing citizens closer to decision-making on community affairs. Pavliuk emphasized that decentralization has been critical to Ukraine’s resilience since 2022, while noting that “there would certainly be a greater outcome in peacetime,” without the constraints imposed by war.

In the media sector, Alyona Nevmerzhytska, CEO of the independent outlet hromadske, is actively implementing her 2025 SU-DD project to strengthen the organization’s long-term sustainability and resilience. Her work, she says, “addresses two interconnected challenges: financial vulnerability and the rapid emergence of AI in the media landscape.” By developing diversified revenue strategies and integrating responsible AI tools into newsroom workflows, she aims to “improve efficiency, counter disinformation, and expand audience reach.” Despite ongoing security risks, she shares that the newsroom has maintained consistent production, adapted its operations, and prioritized staff safety, demonstrating what she described as “strong institutional resilience.” During her time on campus, Nevmerzhytska met with Stanford journalism and technology experts, whose guidance enhanced her strategic thinking around AI integration and digital modernization, “providing practical insights and [the] confidence to adopt responsible AI tools for efficiency and multilingual production.” She reports that hromadske continues to serve as a platform for accountability and public debate, reinforcing its role within Ukraine’s civil society.

Iaroslav Liubchenko, currently CEO of Ukraine’s national electronic public procurement system Prozorro, focused his 2023 Stanford project on strengthening transparency, efficiency, and institutional integrity in Ukraine’s defense procurement architecture. Today, that vision has become central to his leadership agenda. Prozorro is advancing three core priorities: deepening European integration through the approximation of EU public procurement directives into national legislation — in cooperation with Member of Parliament Oleksii Movchan — and sharing Prozorro’s digital governance model with EU partners; scaling up defense procurement within the system, including drones, unmanned and robotic systems, electronic warfare capabilities, non-lethal equipment for military infrastructure, and strengthened cooperation with the Defence Procurement Agency; and developing the broader Prozorro ecosystem through new coalitions and markets, advanced digital instruments, and AI integration. Prozorro seeks to ensure that Ukraine’s defense and rebuilding efforts are supported by transparent, technology-driven, and institutionally resilient procurement systems — not only fully aligned with EU standards, but capable of serving as a model for public procurement reform across Europe.

Ukraine’s Path Forward

Together, the fellows describe a future shaped not only by physical rebuilding but by the strength of Ukraine’s institutions and civic life. When asked about the country’s priorities for the next several years, their responses aligned in three areas: securing victory and sustaining defense capacity, advancing EU integration, and rebuilding critical infrastructure. Each emphasized that reconstruction must be paired with governance reforms to ensure public trust and long-term resilience.

Amid the political, economic, and human toll of war, our fellows agreed that the “unbreakable spirit and will of Ukrainians” gives them hope. “I am inspired by the endurance of Ukrainian society,” said Nevmerzhytska. “Despite exhaustion and loss, people continue to volunteer, innovate, and support each other. That civic resilience gives me confidence that Ukraine’s democratic spirit remains strong.”

As we look to the beginning of the fifth year of Russia’s war, Ukraine’s future is still uncertain. But the projects these leaders developed during their time at Stanford have carried into their work in parliament, regional government, civil society, media, and the defense sector. What began as ideas for reform are now being tested and adapted under wartime conditions, as they work to keep institutions functioning and prepare for the country’s long-term recovery.

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Following his keynote remarks, Khalil joined a panel discussion with William Dobson, the coeditor of the Journal of Democracy and a veteran in international reporting, and Elora Shehabuddin, a professor of gender and women's studies and the director of the Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley. James Hamilton, Stanford University’s vice provost for undergraduate education, the Hearst Professor of Communication, and director of the Journalism Program, chaired the discussion. Both Dobson and Hamilton also serve on the judging committee for the Shorenstein Award.

The Shorenstein Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, recognizes outstanding journalists and news outlets whose work has deepened the understanding of Asia while advancing the values of a free press.
 

Bearing Witness 

Khalil opened his remarks by sharing a photograph of himself listening to a Bangladeshi woman whose son had been abducted by the Rapid Action Battalion, the country’s elite counterterrorism force that has been accused of serious human rights violations and abuse of power. For Khalil, the image encapsulates the animating question at the heart of Netra News: What does it truly mean to comfort the afflicted?

Investigative journalists, he argued, are first and foremost witnesses. Their work requires listening and documenting, for as long as it takes. He described an investigation that started with a phone call from a day laborer in Malaysia, who recounted his experience being abducted in Dhaka and held in a secret site by a plainclothed squad. Khalil kept calling back with questions, continuing the conversation over months. The source shared precise recollections that helped Netra News map a clandestine detention facility in the heart of the Bangladeshi capital. The investigation, "Secret Prisoners of Dhaka," published in 2023, shed light on hidden abuses and was shortlisted for the Global Shining Light Award for investigative journalism in developing countries. 

Khalil described other Netra News investigations that have sought to expose high-level crimes. “Body Count” combined data journalism and fieldwork to analyze more than a decade of alleged extrajudicial killings and acts of torture by Bangladeshi security forces. The patterns revealed which agencies were involved, geographic concentration, and spikes in killings during election cycles, all underscoring a systematic practice. For this work, the newsroom won a 2024 Sigma Award for Data Journalism.

Bearing witness, Khalil noted, means that public interest journalism must listen not only to the afflicted, but also to the perpetrators of horrible crimes. In another project, collaborating with German TV broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Netra News interviewed former Rapid Action Battalion commanders on camera about how extrajudicial killings were carried out. The investigation, "Inside the Death Squad," was the first to provide evidence of targeted killings and torture by the RAB, and was recognized with a 2024 Human Rights Press Award for documentary video.

Another joint investigation with DW exposed a pattern of deploying RAB members implicated in torture and killings to serve as United Nations peacekeepers. The revelations were cited by governments and lawmakers, and intensified scrutiny of peacekeeping vetting practices. 

“This is accountability journalism at its purest: reporting that not only informs, but also confronts power and demands justice, said Hamilton in his remarks before the award presentation.

Khalil situated this kind of reportage within a normative framework of journalism that defends democracy and human rights, for which he outlined four roles: monitorial (watching and warning), facilitative (bringing opposing segments of society together), radical (challenging institutions in the name of rights and freedoms), and collaborative (engaging with power when appropriate). First and foremost, this kind of journalism serves the public interest.

An Experiment in Exile

Those commitments guided Netra News from its inception. Khalii established the outlet in 2019 in Sweden, where he had lived in exile since 2008, seeking refuge following his detention and torture by the Bangladeshi military intelligence agency. As he set up the newsroom in exile with colleagues, he made a deliberate choice: rather than defending democratic norms from afar, they would “cover Bangladesh as if it were a democracy, like Sweden or the United States, and report accordingly.”

That meant reporting with no self-censorship or fear. Due to security risks to staff in-country, Netra News adopted the discipline of an intelligence operation, eschewing daily news coverage and opinions to concentrate instead on meticulously vetted investigations. With its reporters distributed across multiple countries and some working undercover in Bangladesh, the newsroom combined offshore editorial independence with on-the-ground reporting, publishing its investigations in both Bangla and English. This approach uniquely positioned the newsroom to cover the July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh with uncommon access.

Now, a year after mass protests toppled Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian regime, and 18 years after he fled the country, Khalil has returned to open a Netra News bureau in Dhaka. Receiving the Shorenstein Journalism Award on behalf of the outlet at this moment, he said, is both recognition of its impact since its founding and a signal of support to the next generation of journalists carrying its mission forward.
 

Youth-Led Uprising in Context

During the discussion that followed Khalil’s keynote, the panelists considered the prospects for democracy in Bangladesh, the economics of investigative reporting, and the dynamics of youth-led protests in Asia.

Asked how the media landscape in Bangladesh had shifted since the 2024 uprising, Khalil said the media’s muscle memory remains one of censorship and fear. The challenge now is to “unlearn stenography,” that is, the practice of reporting only what those in power say, and build habits of dispassionate public interest journalism that scrutinizes both state and non-state power. That includes the interim government, corporate interests, and majoritarian religious forces.

Investigative journalism is a tough business to monetize and sustain. Khalil explained that Netra News is a nonprofit and that grant funding from the National Endowment for Democracy has made it possible. Long-term independence, however, will require earning monetary support from the people it serves. “The ultimate test is asking the public, ‘Will you pay for this?’”

Turning to Gen Z protest movements that have swept across South Asia, Dobson noted a wave of digitally savvy youth mobilizations pressing entrenched elites for substantive change. “People want real change, not shuffling the same roster of political players.” The youth-led uprisings that swept through Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and, more recently, Nepal, explained Dobson, had not originally set out to topple the established regimes, but to fight deepening inequality and economic disparities. The agendas changed, however, due to the lack of responsiveness from political institutions that have been hollowed out by patronage and corruption.

Shehabuddin underscored the central role women activists played in Bangladesh’s 2024 protests, leading from the front to help topple the authoritarian government, only to find themselves largely absent from decision-making led by the interim government.

The event concluded with questions from the audience about journalism in transitional contexts and under strain amid democratic backsliding. Newsrooms should aim to serve the entirety of society, said Khalil, alluding to the fragmented media landscape in the United States. As for standing up to anti-democratic power, he returned to first principles: the media’s charge is to bear witness, especially when those in power disapprove.