infodemic interviews
As Covid-19 spread around the world, a considerable flow of false and inaccurate information has been circulating – turning the pandemic into an ‘Infodemic’.
The ESMH is tackling disinformation and misinformation on coronavirus with a new devoted section, featuring a series of interviews with European (and international) multidisciplinary researchers, studying and analysing dis & misinformation on coronavirus (and beyond).
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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... -
Karen Douglas interview: 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... -
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... -
Michael Hameleers : "The most effective way to combat mis- or disinformation seems to be a combination of media literacy programmes and fact-checking"
Michael Hameleers (PhD, University of Amsterdam) is Assistant Professor in Political Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), Amsterdam, Netherlands. His research interests include populism, framing, (affective) polarization, and disinformation. Recently, most of his research... -
Zarine Kharazian from Digital Forensic Research Lab about the research on Covid-19 disinformation
Zarine Kharazian is Assistant Editor with the Digital Forensic Research Lab, a start-up within the Atlantic Council that focuses on researching and combating disinformation and protecting democratic institutions and norms from those who would seek to undermine them in the digital engagement space. At... -
Nahema Marchal: "People who seek junk content, because they find it entertaining or are simply curious, will always find it"
Nahema Marchal is a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and a researcher for the Computational Propaganda Project. Her research examines the relationship between social media and polarization and the manipulation of digital platforms in the context of mis- and disinformation... -
Renée DiResta: "The effectiveness of countering Covid-19 disinformation depends on the degree of trust your government enjoys"
Renée DiResta is the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social and other media networks. Renee’s areas of research include disinformation and propaganda by state-sponsored actors, and health misinformation and conspiracy... -
Interview with Stephan Lewandowsky, cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol
Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive scientist with an interest in computational modelling. Recently, he has become particularly interested in how people update their memories if things they believe turn out to be false. This has led him to examine the persistence of misinformation and spread of “fake...