Article by Alain Tolhurst for PoliticsHome - published 9 April 2020 Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has called on the broadcast watchdog to take action against a TV station for allowing David Icke to promote “lunatic conspiracy theories” about the coronavirus pandemic. London Live has come under fire for giving the former BBC presenter - who has […]
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 […]
Published 30 March 2020 Tory MP Damian Collins has warned against sharing coronavirus-related "fake news" as he launched an online service to combat falsehoods during the pandemic. The former chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media And Sport (DCMS) Select Committee called for knowingly peddling misinformation related to the Covid-19 outbreak to be made an offence. He has […]
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 […]