Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to face questions from Congress about Russia and censorship this week

Facebook and Twitter will dispatch top executives to Capitol Hill this week to try to assuage lawmakers who fear that Russian propaganda and political censorship continue to plague the world’s most popular social media sites.

The back-to-back House and Senate hearings scheduled for Wednesday illustrate the new political reality for Silicon Valley, as Democrats and Republicans alike increasingly seem willing to regulate how the industry moderates content online — and eager to subject its once-untouchable executives to intense public scrutiny.