Disinformation
European scientists unite against disinformation: ‘It can have severe consequences for human health and our economies’
A group of European scientists has made it their mission to raise awareness about disinformation, its mechanisms and its dangers. They belong to ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities. This organisation brings researchers from all over Europe together; in various working groups and projects they explore topics of high societal relevance ...
Provenance: ‘Stop and think’ before sharing online content
Challenging dis- information in the news requires a multi faceted, multi disciplinary and multi media approach. The EU funded project ‘Provenance’ focuses on helping people evaluate online content, equipping them with media literacy skills and discouraging the sharing of unreliable information. Could interventions like this change the dynamics of social sharing by encouraging engagement with high-quality content?
Joana Gonçalves de Sá: “Mitigate the misinformation pandemic by ‘vaccinating’ the susceptible individuals first.”
Joana Gonçalves de Sá is an Invited Associate Professor at the Physics Department of Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, and was the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant to study human behavior using the online spread of ’fake news’ as a model system. Disinformation and misinformation are not a new problem, so why did ...
Michael Butter: “Education can help against conspiracy theories”
Michael Butter is Professor of American Studies at the University of Tübingen. He is the author of The Nature of Conspiracy Theories (Polity, 2020) and Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project Populism and Conspiracy Theory. This year you co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories along with Peter Knight. Can you talk about some of ...
What is driving people’s belief in conspiracy theories?
Interview with Prof Karen Douglas Karen Douglas is a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent. She studies why people believe in conspiracy theories, and what the consequences of conspiracy theories are for individuals, groups, and societies. As a social psychology scholar, what brought you to conspiracy theories as a research subject in ...
Covid-19: What are the consequences of the unprecedented rush for knowledge?
The surge in COVID-19 research papers has put the spotlight on the peer review process and is changing the way we assess the quality of scientific literature.
Interview with Philipp Schmid on science denialism, misinformation & the importance of public confidence in the safety & effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine
Dr. Philipp Schmid is a scientific researcher at the Department of Psychology at the University of Erfurt (Germany). Philipp’s research aims at analysing the psychological reasons of science denialism. He is the lead author of the WHO guideline on how to respond to vocal vaccine denier in public and a co-author of the Debunking Handbook ...
What drives public trust? Broadening the traditional scope of science communication with TRESCA
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalisation of our daily lives and, by now, we are all a bit more dependent on technology than we had been before. But how can we trust all the scientific information that we receive through the media? How can we have a common understanding of what is reliable when we are being exposed to massive online information flows? Do we trust the same truths? What kind of people are more susceptible to trusting conspiracy theories? Using a novel approach based on social science, the new EU-funded project TRESCA tackles these, and other, research questions.
