While disinformation has always existed, my research explores the cultural shift brought about by the form of ‘fake news’ that emerged from the 2016 US election. Specifically, the impact for journalists in Northern Ireland during the COVID-19 crisis.
As a Leverhulme Interdisciplinary Network on Cybersecurity and Society (LINCS) project, my research aims to interlink social science with computer science. Ethnographic fieldwork during the pandemic will form the basis of the study and inform the natural language processing (NLP) direction of the work. The role of emotion in news production will be explored, as well as questions of truth and trust. The project will take a constructivist approach, drawing on discourse analysis and theories of affect and emotion.
I've received some great support from HAPP, LINCS and my supervisor. I've had opportunities to present my work at both the LINCS seminars and conference. I've also benefited greatly from attending training programmes at the Graduate School, including gaining the Researcher Plus accreditation and becoming the AHSS Faculty Winner in the Annual Researcher Poster Competition.