Rosie's Ramblings

  If you don’t know already, I recently graduated ! Which is an exciting feat and makes the last four years of work entirely worth it. However, as everyone who has graduated will know, the question on everyone’s mind is: What’s next? Whether they mean well or not, parents, peers, and even people you've just met will ask what your plan is for the future. This question can bring both fear and excitement for what lies ahead. I’ve been lucky in the sense that I’ve always roughly known what I wanted to do. Fortunately, I’ve recently taken a big step toward my dream career in journalism by being accepted into News Associates to study for my NCTJ. But this blog post isn’t about that because before all that happened, I wasn’t sure how to answer the what’s next question either. Many of my peers, especially those of us in the social sciences are still unsure what we’re doing next. This is through no fault of their own; they refresh LinkedIn, Indeed, and other job sites daily, applying to r...

In a world where information is at our fingertips it is no surprise to see how misinformation has spread. As a politics student who focused on political communication for her dissertation I have seen how easily misinformation can spread. Similarly I have seen how political actors and journalists can use misinformation to push their own narratives, shape public opinion and to influence elections.  Misinformation is defined as false or misleading information shared without the intent to deceive which is often interchangeably used with disinformation which is deliberately deceptive. Whilst their intentions differ, both can have implications for political outcomes when used by political actors. The rise of using social media platforms for political information has allowed for these platforms to become a fertile environment where misinformation spreads faster than ever.  The 2016 Brexit referendum has become famous for misinformation as the NHS bus is a now well known example of fa...