Cohort: SOMET 38°
Topic of the thesis: Regulatory Science on Social Media: Tensions Between Journalistic and Scientific Interpretations of Objectivity

Abstract: You can make numbers say anything", especially when you calculate the impact of digital technologies on the environment. Expert reports often reach opposite conclusions. Inevitably, this leads to online and offline debates regarding their numbers' objectivity: technology companies blame organisations that calculate a negative impact for slowing down progress, and NGOs blame technology companies for distorting the truth to sell hardware and software. What does objectivity mean in this context? How do private companies, NGOs, government agencies or think tanks produce objectivity when participating in online regulatory debates? This research sheds a new light on the impact of social media on regulatory science. It investigates how different forms of public spaces (policy reports, the media, Twitter) value different forms of objectivity, and how this influences the way experts try to be objective. It tests the hypothesis that journalistic objectivity criteria are as important as scientific ones when policy debates unfold in highly public spaces like social media.

Research interests: Science and technology studies, digital media, sociology of expertise, disinformation

Graduated from: London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc) University of Southern California (MA)

Degrees obtained:MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and USC)

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