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…

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.

How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned?

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?

LUC historian Jacqueline Hylkema unmasks forgeries from the early modern Dutch Republic in the research project

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.

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.

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.

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…

If a forged Vermeer or Rembrandt is discovered, it is world news. Yet tracing fakes has long been a low priority in art history. University lecturer Anna Tummers will receive an ERC grant of almost two million euros to change that.

Fake news a new phenomenon? Not according to Rens Tacoma and Indira Huliselan. In an NWO project, the associate professor and PhD student will delve into the twisting, scheming and tampering with facts that went on thousands of years ago.

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…

Lecture, PCNI Research Seminar

Alumni event

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.

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.

From now on, the Master's Vitality and Ageing will be called Health, Ageing and Society. In terms of content, the programme of this international interdisciplinary Master's at Leiden University remains the same. The new name better covers the content of the programme and thus enhances recognition for…

A selection of news from Leiden University.

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…

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.

Leiden AI Week

What do people wonder about on social media? University lecturer Matthijs Westera is the recipient of an NWO grant to investigate what people are curious about online.

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.…

The EU proposal for a regulatory framework on artificial intelligence will not prevent the dangers of cybercrime or the spreading of fake news using ChatGPT. Cyber criminals can use the new technology to write harmful software, phishing mails and fake news.

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.

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,…

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

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.

news sustainable sustainability activities

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

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