Disinformation
Fostering trust in the digital age: ensuring the quality of online information
If there is one thing the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, it is how digital misinformation can severely impact public discourse and decision-making. It underscores the critical need for reliable scholarly communication online. We discuss these challenges with Dr. Suzanne Dumouchel, co-coordinator of OPERAS, the European research infrastructure dedicated to open scholarly communication in humanities and social ...
Sander van der Linden on how psychological inoculation protects against false news
Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Professor van der Linden, we have seen many attempts to debunk climate and health disinformation. How well do fact checks fare? Sander van der Linden: ...
Journalism and climate change: the urgent need to make complex topics accessible
The European Science-Media Hub (ESMH) organized its second annual summer school in Brussels to give journalists the chance to reflect on how they cover climate change. The goal is to make this critical news more accessible to the public. Journalists face unique challenges when reporting on this topic. For example, they must explain complex scientific ...
Trust in science: a weapon to combat misinformation
During the Covid-19 pandemic misinformation has spread like wildfire. How to counter this phenomenon is precisely the topic of the debate held by the ESMH on Friday 20 May 2022, in the European Parliament Liaison Office of Madrid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEQbzRvPFqc An infodemic within a pandemic. One of the most harmful consequences of misinformation is its impact ...
Promoting trust in science and countering misinformation: a task for all
Misinformation is a new pandemic, one for which the only cure is knowledge. Informed audiences, media-savvy scientists, and high-quality journalism are key to counter misinformation. These are the main takeaways from the debate on 'Promoting trust in science to counter misinformation', the third event of a series called Science-Media Days, which took place on 20 ...
ESMH participates in the conference on the future of science communication in Europe
How to communicate scientific evidence in the digital era? How to maintain an open dialogue with citizens and address disinformation and misinformation? Could science communication be more structured and institutionalised at European level? These were the main issues discussed at the second Future of Science Communication Conference (FSCC 2.0) on 26 April in Brussels. Academics, ...
Interview with Frank Kelly: How to effectively communicate uncertainty?
We spoke with chair of the report Frank Kelly, Emeritus Professor of the Mathematics of Systems at the University of Cambridge. The world's oldest independent scientific academy, the Royal Society, dedicated to promoting excellence in science, has published a new report on the challenge of scientific misinformation: how can we foster a healthier online information ...
Ciara Greene: “How false news and memories change readers’ behaviour”
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 a study on ...