Fake news is becoming more and more prominent now that social media allow for an endless stream of unfiltered content to reach us. But what happens if we can no longer distinguish the truth from the lie?

The fact-checking initiative Nieuwscheckers has won the Dutch round of the European Citizens Award. This prize is awarded annually to projects and initiatives that deliver an exceptional performance within the EU.

Lecture, PCNI Research Seminar

FactRank is a new online tool that automatically detects ‘checkable’ claims made by politicians in parliamentary debates or tweets, and therefore enables fact-checkers to work much faster. Alexander Pleijter, a researcher and lecturer in Journalism and New Media, helped develop FactRank.

With over 200 participants, the first day of the Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media (MISDOOM) was a great success. With researchers and practitioners from communication science, media studies, computer science, data science, and journalists and online media…

The government, the people and the country were in desperate straits. This about sums up the state of affairs in the Disaster Year of 1672. It was 350 years ago, and to mark the occasion PhD candidate Roosje Peeters collaborated on a series of letters to and from a key political figure Johan de Witt,…

With the emergence of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, it’s easier than ever to share information. Including disinformation. During his PhD computer scientist Xueqin Chen developed a new way to recognise fake news and predict how messages spread within online social networks…

James Shires has contributed a chapter to the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon 2021), which gathers 20 articles from the law, technology and strategy domains.

The corona crisis is also a disinformation crisis for the global community in general, and for the European Union (EU) in particular. What is less clear is how adequate the EU’s response to the ‘infodemic’ has been. This essay exposes the dangers of disinformation for the EU, which have intensified…

Disinformation has become a popular subject of study and debate. A plethora of publications and policies have emerged, aiming to analyse and curb the negative consequences of unwanted communication.

Dr Mark Leiser, Assistant Professor in Law and Digital Technologies at eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, has won a grant for research on fake news.

Dutch and Flemish partners, including Leiden University, are joining forces as the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) in the fight against the spread of fake news, and have received the support of the European Commission.

Since 2006, HJD has made an important contribution to shaping diplomatic studies as an international academic field. Our new HJD Diplomacy Reading List presents a diverse collection of analyses categorized into forty-five topics published in HJD over the years. We hope these lists prove a valuable resource…

Professor of Media Law and Information Society Tarlach McGonagle is concerned about the increase in online disinformation and hate speech. He argues that human rights should guide new policies for the online world. McGonagle will give his inaugural lecture on 9 May.

Leiden AI Week

Misinformation spreads easily and fast. It gets presented as news, whereas actual news gets dismissed as fake. Conflicting streams of information allows all sides to cherry-pick whatever is most comfortable, boosting degrees of confidence and confusing the deliberation of both politicians and voters.…

People can be easily mislead with graphs. But they don’t necessarily stay misled, the research shows.

A European cooperation project on disinformation and fact-checking training empowering current and future media and media education professionals, to identify, prevent, and combat fake news spread over digital networks.

Lecture

By spreading fake news via TV spots and Twitter with the use of Social Bots, Pascal professor Heike Trautmann is investigating the characteristics of fake news. She is calling on Leiden researchers to cooperate in the project.

Leiden master's students of Journalism and New Media are going to help Facebook bar fake news from the social medium.

In this blog post, Linda Slapakova discusses the various roles that AI plays in counter-disinformation efforts, the prevailing shortfalls of AI-based counter-disinformation tools and the technical, governance and regulatory barriers to their uptake, and how these could be addressed to foster the uptake…

BrainTrain: an initiative from Leiden University in which a team of students visit high schools to make adolescents more resilient against disinformation on the news and on their socials. In an interactive two-hour guest lesson, high school pupils discover how easily their brains can be tricked into…

Nieuwscheckers, a team of journalist fact-checkers from Leiden University, received the Mr. K.J. Cath Prize at the opening of the academic year on 5 September. This biennial prize is awarded to students or staff who have enhanced the University’s good name.

In the track Cybersecurity Governance, you will be familiarized with the breadth, depth and complexity of cybersecurity challenges. This track seeks to provide you state-of-the art with knowledge of governance and regulatory strategies available to address these challenges.

Conducting research on reliability of journalism and the trust in media.

Leiden psychologists receive an Outreach Grant from the Young Academy Leiden (YAL) to talk about facts and fables in their field of research. Marieke Bos, Lara Wierenga, Marit Ruitenberg and Sanne Willems will receive up to €1000 to realise their project.

For years, the Dutch National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) has collected and shared privacy-sensitive information about citizens. Experts say this is in breach of the law.

Conference

Alumni event

Children find that both dinosaur fossils and replicas belong in a museum, but they appreciate the real objects more. This is shown by research from Leiden University and Naturalis Biodiversity Center. 'Children look beyond superficial looks and attach great value to less obvious characteristics, such…

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A selection of news from Leiden University.

Lecture

In the globalised world of today, traditional definitions of national Self and national Other no longer hold. The unmistakable transformation of German and Dutch societies demands a thorough rethinking of national boundaries on several levels.

Pathogenic bacteria are increasingly resistant to today’s antibiotics. Professor Gilles van Wezel seeks new forms of antibiotics in good bacteria that live in the soil.

TRI Leiden Turnaround, Rescue & Insolvency

There are thousands of stories to tell about our alumni. How they experienced their student days. Where they ended up and what they still dream about. We provide an overview of Leiden alumni with our newsletters and the alumni magazine Leidraad.

Gubbens

News, events, announcements, social media and more about the building of the new Middle Eastern Library in Leiden

Political scientist Luzia Helfer (Leiden University) empirically tested claims about media-politics relatiopns using unique data from experimental studies with elected politicians and political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

The latest news on diversity and inclusion and an overview of coming D&I-activities within Leiden University.

What's New is a lecture series organised by LUCIS and the department of Middle Eastern Studies. The lectures focus on current research on Islam and the Middle East.

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