Anti-vaccine activists online continue hammering their argument, claiming they had always been right, says fact-checker Tommaso Canetta. He edits fact-checking briefs for the European Digital Media Observatory, where they monitor how COVID, climate and war disinformation ebbs and flows.
How algorithms make fringe parties disproportionately visible
After attending a talk by Prof. Miguel Poiares Maduro, I invited him to be a guest on our podcast. We are discussing how far-right and far-left parties promote Russia’s talking points on Ukraine, but which ones will do this depends on each country’s political landscape.
The Inoculation’s news roundup
We discuss the ‘died suddenly’ conspiracy, foreign actors, and insects in food
Is there a future for Twitter as a public space?
Like many others, I joined Mastodon last year (you can find me @daivarep@dju.social). The Twitter migration, as it became known, was a reaction to the change in ownership of Twitter. Famously, the oligarch Elon Musk bought Twitter and made some sweeping changes. In the last episode of our podcast of the year 2022, Eva and I discuss how are the …
Interview with a Swedish journalist who infiltrated the antivaxx movement
Ever since a speaker at Dataharvest mentioned the SVT team’s investigation into the anti-vaccination movement, I wanted to interview someone from this team and ask what it was like. The Swedish team started their investigation at a similar time as Eva and I started ours, but instead of spreading wide in Europe they traced influences all the way to US …
Misinformation and disinformation: what’s in it for spreaders?
Since my colleague Eva and I started our project on anti-vaccination movements, reading about the topic has often led us to academic and media articles on misinformation or disinformation. The distinction between the two is not always clear, but it is based on intent. Disinformation is defined as intentional efforts to mislead people in order to sow distrust and chaos. …
2020 in freelance journalism
It’s great that many prominent freelancers are sharing their #FreelancePies – we certainly need to open up the conversation about money. In this post I’m not going to disclose my total income, but I’ll show you what freelancing was like for me since I left my last stable job. I’m doing this to contribute to helping people who aspire for …
Let’s celebrate Baltic unity by learning more about our neighbors
Writer Justinas Žilinskas challenged his Facebook followers today by saying that, as we commemorate anniversaries of the Baltic Chain, the longest human chain recorded, we still hardly know anything that is happening in other Baltic countries. We hardly ever listen to Baltic music or know the names of other countries′ leaders. Some of his followers commented how they actually have …