Disinformation Dynamics
Custom Labelled Veld 1
MSCA-19-Picone01
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Beschrijving van het project
While the information crisis is widely acknowledged, academic knowledge on the depth, extent and detailed manifestation of this crisis is lacking due to an evidence and research deficit. This project aims to narrow this knowledge gap by generating a deeper understanding of the role of disinformation in citizens’ everyday media consumption. We investigate how the impact of disinformation is mitigated by citizens’ media use, socio-demographics and psychological dispositions. We refer to the interplay between forms of disinformation and the ways in which citizens are able to deal with them as disinformation dynamics. We will investigate the various factors that can explain people’s acceptability of and critical attitude towards disinformation. The resulting rich empirical data will in a best case scenario inform the development and training of machine-learning algorithms for detecting disinformation undertaken by partners in our network.
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SMIT Research Group
SMIT stands for Studies in Media, Innovation and Technology. Our research group is part of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and imec.
Promotor Ike Picone teaches and researches disruptions on the crossroad of journalism, technological innovations and democracy. The thread within his research is the study of news use practices within the broad field of journalism studies. More precisely, his work focuses on ‘productive’ use of new(s) media, conceptualized within his research as self-publication. The scope is to understand how people participate to media as a social practice, and what motivations and thresholds play a role in shaping this practice. His research topics include user participation to online news, the changing relationship between news audiences and journalists and the role of new media;in the emergence of deliberative public spheres.
Dr. Ike Picone is Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Senior Researcher within the research group IMEC-SMIT. The threadwithin his research is the study of news use practices within the broad field of journalism studies. More precisely, his work focuses on ‘productive’ use of new(s) media, conceptualized within his research as self-publication. The scope is to understand how people participate to media as a socialpractice, and what motivations and thresholds play a role in shaping this practice.
His research topics include user participation to online news, the changing relationship between news audiences and journalists and the role of new media in the emergence of deliberative public spheres. Within Studies in Media, Innovation and Technology research group (SMIT), he is part of senior staffand responsible for developing the ‘Tackling Disinformation’ research strand, one of the priorities of SMIT’s strategic research agenda for 2019-2020. He is part of the international team working on the renowned yearly Digital News Report of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. His expertise has been acknowledged amongst others through his membership of the Flemish Council for Journalism and the temporary expert group on Fake News of former Belgian Minister of Digital Agenda Alexander De Croo. He has been vocal about the issue of disinformation in the Belgian media. He is also a member of the Council for Journalism of Flanders (Belgium).