Team Members
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Prof. Christina Elmer
Christina Elmer is a professor of digital journalism and data journalism at the Institute of Journalism and coordinates GADMO together with Marcus Kreutler. Within the project, she is also responsible for the data-driven research activities on the spread of disinformation and the development of effective countermeasures. Before joining academia, Christina worked as a science and data journalist and in leadership positions at the publishing house Spiegel, driving projects that combined editorial and technological aspects.
Marcus Kreutler, Dipl. Journalist
Marcus Kreutler is manager of TU Dortmund University's Institute of Journalism and coordinates GADMO together with Christina Elmer. Marcus used to combine journalistic and research work, often as part of international projects. His research interests include foreign coverage, transnational communication, and media accountability.
Prof. Dr. Henrik Müller
Henrik Müller is professor of Economic Policy Journalism at TU Dortmund University and a co-founder of Dortmund Center for data-based Media Analysis (DoCMA). His research interests include the quantitative measurement of media discourses and related feedbacks into the economy and politics. The conceptual focus is on the concept of the economic narrative. Müller is in charge of the TU’s undergraduate program Economic Policy Journalism and the master program Economics and Journalism.
Prof. Dr. Carsten Jentsch
Carsten Jentsch is professor for Business and Social Statistics at TU Dortmund University. His research interests are in the field of mathematical statistics with a focus on the methodological development and implementation of estimation and testing procedures as well as on the modeling of temporally and/or spatially dependent data. At GADMO, he is working on the analysis and modelling of textual data as well as on the statistical analysis of the spread of disinformation in social networks.
Prof. Dr. Jörg Rahnenführer
Jörg Rahnenführer is professor for Statistical Methods in Genetics and Chemometrics at TU Dortmund University since 2007, with a research focus on statistical methods in bioinformatics, toxicology, and medicine. He has been a founding member of DoCMA since 2015 and works in diverse collaborations with the Institute of Journalism, in GADMO especially with regard to the statistical analysis of large text collections with topic modeling.
Nico Hornig, M.A.
Nico Hornig has been working as a research assistant for the Institute of Journalism and the DoCMA research project since December 2019. He studied "Economic Policy Journalism" and "Economics and Journalism" at the TU Dortmund University, worked as a trainee at the German business weekly WirtschaftsWoche and for four years in the newsroom of the the German business daily Handelsblatt. Within GADMO, Nico analyses disinformation, its dissemination and fact-checks from a communication science perspective.
Jonathan Flossdorf, M.Sc.
Jonathan Flossdorf is a research assistant and doctoral student at the Department of Statistics. His research interests comprise the analysis of statistical network data with a particular focus on change-point detection in dynamic network structures and goodness-of-fit tests. At GADMO, he is especially working on the statistical analysis of the spread of disinformation in social networks.
Dr. Jonas Rieger
At GADMO, Jonas Rieger is working on the modeling and analysis of textual data. Topic models as well as transformer models are used for this purpose. He received his doctorate from the Department of Statistics in Dortmund. Since then, he has been working there as a postdoc and as an NLP scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) in Hamburg.
Tina Bettels-Schwabbauer, Dipl.-Online-Journalist
Tina Bettels-Schwabbauer is a research assistant at the Institute of Journalism and at GADMO in charge of public relations activities. For more than ten years, she was managing editor of the German website of the European Journalism Observatory. Tina has extensive experience and expertise as a lecturer for journalism and media in Germany and abroad.
Dr. Susanne Wegner
Susanne Wegner heads the training newsroom of the Institute of Journalism at TU Dortmund University and is part of the GADMO research team for monitoring the platforms and their measures against disinformation.
Kian Badrnejad
KIAN BADRNEJAD has been working as a fact-checking editor for dpa since 2021. Before that, he worked as a reporter for the political and investigative magazines at Norddeutscher Rundfunk, where he also did a traineeship in 2013. At dpa, he verifies, researches and writes. He has also set up the WhatsApp fact-checking service and develops new formats for the messenger service. Kian Badrnejad studied Iranian studies, communication science and political science in Bamberg and speaks Persian as well as German and English.
Tobias Schormann
TOBIAS SCHORMANN is coordinator for tenders and projects in the fact-checking team. He was previously editor at dpa-Themendienst, dpa's department for consumer news, for several years. He also did a traineeship there. He studied German and political science in Hamburg and Berlin.
Teresa Dapp
TERESA DAPP is head of dpa's fact-checking editorial department. Previously, she worked for two years as a foreign correspondent in London and spent five years reporting on Berlin's political affairs as a correspondent. Dapp studied history, politics and sociology in Berlin and Brussels.
Stefan Voss
STEFAN VOSS built up dpa's fact-checking team and is head of verification at dpa. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Ukraine and Russia for more than 10 years and speaks fluent Russian. Voß was a editor in the politics department before joining the verification department. He studied history, Slavic studies and political science.
Alice Echtermann
Alice Echtermann studied media and communication science and political science in Bremen and then completed a traineeship at the Weser-Kurier. She then worked there as an online editor and researched the dark side of social networks, algorithms and filter bubbles. She joined CORRECTIV in May 2019, became deputy team leader since in 2020 and is leading the team since May 2022. As part of the team for the research "Kein Filter für Rechts" ("No Filter for the Right"), she was awarded the German Reporter Award 2021 for Data Journalism and the international Sigma Award for Data Journalism.
Uschi Jonas
Uschi Jonas has researched and written as an editor and reporter at the German edition of HuffPost and at FOCUS Online, mainly on climate, environmental protection and sustainability, and since 2018 has been pushing constructive, solution-oriented journalism for broad topics. Since completing her Master's degree in social sciences in 2015, she has experienced many sides of online journalism during her traineeship and subsequently while working as an online editor. She has been part of the CORRECTIV.Faktencheck team since June 2020, deputy team leader since May 2022, team leader from January 2023. At the same time, she has been studying environmental sciences at the Open University of Hagen since June 2021.
Sophie Timmermann
Sophie Timmermann studied International Relations and Journalism. Between 2017 and 2019, she worked in Geneva for the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. She later interned at Bayerischer Rundfunk, researched air strikes by the US-led coalition in Syria for Bellingcat, and researched the rise of alternative media in the UK. She joined the fact-checking team in November 2021. From January 2023, she is deputy head of the team.
Florian Löffler
Florian Löffler studied political science with a focus on extremism and populism and has been working in political communications since 2015. He was responsible for communication and design strategies and digital campaigns for foundations and NGOs but also for public institutions. In 2022, he joined CORRECTIV as a project and policy manager for the several international and European fact-checking networks.
David Schraven
David Schraven is the founder of CORRECTIV and runs the research centre as a publisher. In his former life, he filled lines at the taz, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Welt-Gruppe and the blog Ruhrbarone, which he co-founded. At the then WAZ Group (now Funke Group) he was responsible for the investigative section. David has received many awards for his work.
Isabelle Wirth, Project manager
Isabelle Wirth started her career at AFP in 2000 as a photo editor. Before that, she had studied comparative literature, information and communication, and had worked as an editor and translator for cultural magazines and multimedia companies. At AFP, she has been a member of the photo editor-in-chief team for France, Germany, North-East Europe, and then Europe. From 2018, she was in charge of the AFP Agenda website and in December 2022 she became part of the Europe Media Projects team.
Yacine Le Forestier, Europe deputy director
Yacine Le Forestier is a graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. He joined AFP in 1989, working as a journalist in Berlin, Lyon, London and Frankfurt. He was economic editor in Paris from 2005 to 2007, then Brussels bureau chief from 2007 to 2012 before becoming editor-in-chief and managing director of AFP Germany’s sports subsidiary SID. In 2015, he was appointed as co-head of AFP’s entire operations in Germany. Since 2020, he has been also Deputy to the Europe director, in charge of co-managing European media projects, especially websites dedicated to the fight against disinformation.
Eva Wackenreuther, Head of department
Eva Wackenreuther leads AFP's German-language factchecking team, which started in Berlin and Vienna in September 2020. Eva has been passionate about factchecking since she co-founded the blog Fakt ist Fakt in 2016, which revolved around Austrian politics. Her past positions include editor at the TV channel ProSiebenSat.1PULS4 and organisation manager at Reporters Without Borders Austria. She studied political science and journalism.
Florian Schmidt
FLORIAN SCHMIDT joined APA - Austria Press Agency in January 2017 and is in his role as verification officer responsible for managing and coordinating all fact-check activities. He is involved in the creation and publication of almost every APA fact-check. Schmidt offers workshops and trainings in the area of verification, fake news and digital research both within the APA and externally.
Valerie Schmid
VALERIE SCHMID joined APA - Austria Press Agency in July 2018 after freelance work at „NÖN“ and internships at „WELT“ in Berlin. After working in the multimedia department, she transferred to the department of foreign policy. Since May 2020 she has been responsible for researching, producing and editing fact-checks at APA-Faktencheck. Schmid studied journalism and communication science in Vienna and London.
Stefan Rathmanner
STEFAN RATHMANNER has been working in the multimedia department of APA - Austria Press Agency since 2008. Before that he studied journalism and media management at the FH Wien. He is part of the fact-checking team since 2021 and is involved in monitoring and production.
Martin Boyer
Martin Boyer has been working at AIT since 2011 as a Project Manager and Senior Research Engineer in the field of Sensing and Vision Solutions. Martin is coordinator of the Austrian national security research project "defalsif-AI" focusing on multimedia forensic tools to assess credibility of text, image, video or audio material.
David Fischinger (PhD)
David Fischinger is a Research Engineer at the Austrian Institute of Technology with a PhD in robotics. Since 2020 he has been a member of the Sensing & Vision Solutions Team of the AIT. He will be mainly involved in the selection of the algorithms and performance evaluation.
Nick Papapolizos, Project Manager
Nikos Papapolizos is Project Manager at the ATC Innovation Lab. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Government & Politics and a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Essex, UK. He has worked for over 15 years as Project Manager and Content Manager of web portals and collaborated with various companies as social media consultant and community manager. At ATC he is involved in online research projects and in activities related to content and web management.
Danae Tsabouraki, Research Project Manager
Danae Tsabouraki holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law and a Master’s degree in Sociology of Law from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (UoA), as well as a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). She has been practicing law since 2012, mainly in the fields of civil and corporate law (intellectual property, data protection, contracts, competition law, etc.). Danae has been working at the ATC Innovation Lab since 2011 as Junior Researcher and since 2018 as Project Manager in EU R&D funded projects, with a focus on the media sector and disinformation. She is currently involved among others in the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) as operations consultant.
