Published in the Press Gazette on 22 June 2020 We are living through the first major public health emergency in the age of social media disinformation. Where the disinformation that is spreading online is not just about politics and elections. It is actually about things that can affect people’s health. And as we have heard from doctors who […]
Published in The Daily Telegraph on 18 June 2020 Nick Clegg has announced that Facebook has made some ‘big changes’ to its policies in order to make political communication more transparent, and prevent foreign interference in elections, as was seen in America in 2016 when a Russian agency targeted voters with fake adverts. However, there […]
By Damian Collins MP and Charlie Methven, co-owner of Sunderland AFC We may only have a few weeks to save professional football in this country as we know it. The shock of the COVID-19 crisis has badly exposed the weak financial position of clubs in the English Football League (EFL), many of whom were already […]
Published in PoliticsHome on 28 April 2020 For the sake of China’s future status, it now needs to be an honest broker, and put the health of the world above internal politics and oppression. If the tragic coronavirus outbreak has taught us anything, it is the importance of the international community coming together. Each country […]
Article written for Campaign - published 8 April 2020 There is no corner of the world that has been left untouched by the coronavirus. It is taking lives and may yet be the cause of the greatest economic crash since the great depression of the 1930s. Alongside this, we have seen another virulent and damaging […]
Written for The House Magazine - published 4 April 2020 In response to this problem, I have launched a new service called Infotagion, enabling people to check information they see that doesn’t look right. The coronavirus is the first major public health crisis of the social media age. That is significant because whilst there has […]
Published in WIRED UK on 30 March 2020 The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that there’s an “infodemic” of disinformation about coronavirus spreading rapidly around the world. We have all seen examples of this kind of content being shared in our friends and family networks on social media and through messaging apps. Examples include […]
Article written for Bright Blue's spring 2020 edition of Centre Write The most popular media for some of the most vulnerable people in society, our children, is the least regulated. For most social media accounts, you are required to be 13 to register to use the service, however there are no effective age verification tools […]
My piece for WIRED UK, published 20 February 2020 What happens on Facebook matters. The social network connects billions of users around the world, and is for many of them their principal way of receiving news and engaging with their community. When Facebook’s systems are exploited by Russia to interfere in elections, by extremists to […]
Article written for The Times Red Box, published on 28 January 2020 When the next director-general of the BBC starts their duties in the summer, following the retirement of Lord Hall, they should look back to December to get a clear view of the problems that lie ahead. By this I don’t mean the result […]