Martin W. Angler @martinangler is a freelance science journalist based in Italy who mainly works for international news media. While he specialises in science storytelling, he also loves debunking false news about science and writing investigative stories. Martin is also the editor-in-chief of Eurac research’s science blog network. His textbooks on science journalism, blogging and storytelling have been published by Routledge and Springer. He runs workshops on science writing for academics and young journalists.
Contributor: Martin Angler
Christina Pagel: “You have to accept that people will attack you and you cannot defend yourself”
Interview with Christina Pagel, Professor of Operational Research (a branch of applied mathematics) at University College London (UCL) and Director of the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit. Since May 2020, she has been a member of Independent SAGE, a group of scientists working together to provide independent scientific advice on how to support Britain’s recovery ...
Pia Lamberty: “This is the price you pay, but I still think it’s worth it”
Interview with Pia Lamberty, social psychologist and co-director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS). As a psychologist, she has been researching why people believe in conspiracies and what consequences this worldview entails. Her non-fiction book “Fake Facts - How Conspiracy Theories Determine Our Thinking”, published with Katharina Nocun in May 2020, was ...
Scientists under fire: threats and attacks after speaking in public
When scientists speak out publicly on Covid-19 counter-measures, they expose themselves to online and real-life attacks, threats and abuse. Some have developed very different coping strategies.
Ciara Greene: “How false news and memories change readers’ behaviour”
Infodemic exclusive interview: Cognitive psychologist Ciara Greene studies attention and memory at University College Dublin. Greene recently published a study on how pandemic-related false news changes people’s behaviour. In this interview, she talks about their psychological experiments to demonstrate our susceptibility to false news and how misinformation creates false memories. What prompted you to conduct ...
Henry Ajder: “We need to make finding and accessing these tools as difficult as possible”
Interview with Henry Ajder, speaker and advisor helping organizations to navigate deepfakes, synthetic media, and the evolving AI ecosystem. In 2019, you released a report which found that 96 % of all deepfakes produced depict some kind of image abuse. What has changed since then? Henry Ajder: Back then, no one really knew what the deepfake ...
Mariëtte van Huijstee: “Video footage is perceived as evidence”
Mariëtte van Huijstee is an expert on responsible business conduct. She focuses on technology, innovation companies’ societal responsibility and how ongoing digitalisation is changing the fabric of society. Are deepfakes going to play a decisive role in future fake news? Mariëtte van Huijstee: I’m afraid they will. Just the potential of actual deepfakes circulating is ...
Fighting abusive deepfakes: the need for a multi-layered action plan
Deepfake videos herald some promise for the media industry, but at present they are mostly used for malicious purposes including the production of non-consensual pornography. The law is failing to protect victims as it struggles to keep pace with technological advances.
Mike S. Schäfer: ‘Science is a matter of facts, not opinions’
Mike Schäfer from the University of Zurich talks about why the pandemic has amplified science journalists’ fatigue, how accelerated science affects the quality of reporting, and how politics can ease the burden. How has the pandemic affected science journalism? Mike Schäfer: The pandemic has changed science journalism’s standing in society. We are now living at ...
