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.
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.
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.
Kai-Robin Lange
Kai-Robin Lange is a research associate and postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Business and Social Statistics at TU Dortmund University. In his research, he focuses on natural language processing with political and economic applications. Within GADMO, he works on the methodological advancement of language models as well as analyzing conspiracy theories and their circulation in social media.
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.
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.
Annabelle Finke
Annabelle Finke is an experienced marketing and project manager. She joined dpa in 2011 and has been leading communications for the fact-checking team since 2023. She has extensive experience in content marketing and corporate communications. Within the GADMO project, she coordinates the hub’s communication activities, develops templates, sets up social media channels, and manages their content. Annabelle holds a degree in Advertising and Marketing Communications, which she studied in Hamburg and England.
David Schraven
David Schraven is the founder of CORRECTIV and runs the non-profit media company as its publisher. In his previous career, he wrote for taz, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Welt-Gruppe, and the blog Ruhrbarone, which he co-founded. At the former WAZ Group (now Funke), he was responsible for the investigative department. David has received numerous awards for his work.
Sophie Timmermann
Sophie Timmermann joined CORRECTIV in 2021 and co-leads the fact-checking team as editor-in-chief of fact-checking. As a journalist, she has investigated US-led coalition airstrikes in Syria, disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic in California, and researched the rise of alternative media in the UK. She studied international relations in the Netherlands and journalism in Denmark, the US, and Wales.
Caroline Lindekamp
Caroline Lindekamp first came to CORRECTIV to establish CORRECTIV.Faktenforum, the first community platform for collaborative fact-checking in the German-speaking region. Since 2025, she has co-led the fact-checking team as Director of Fact Checking. Previously, she wrote as a journalist for Handelsblatt Online, journalist, European Media Observatory, FAZ, and others, and was a media analyst at NewsGuard. She studied journalism in Dortmund and France, taught at universities, and was a fellow in the JournalismAI program at the London School of Economics.
Isabelle Wirth
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.
Katharina Zwins
Katharina Zwins leads the AFP fact-checking team covering Germany and Austria, which started work in Berlin and Vienna in September 2020. Before joining AFP in 2023, Katharina worked for the Austrian news magazine ‘profil’, among others. She studied law at the University of Panthéon-Assas in Paris and at the University of Vienna, where she completed her doctorate.
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.
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.
Christina Schwaha
Christina Schwaha has been working for APA – Austria Press Agency since 2006. After a few years in the mulitmedia department she joined the department of foreign politics in 2011. Since 2024 she is also part of the fact-checking team, where she is responsible for researching, producing and editing fact-checks as well as other projects. Christina studied international development and communication science in Vienna and Lund (Sweden).
Martin Boyer
Martin Boyer has been working as Thematic Coordinator and Senior Research Engineer at DSAI (Data Science & Artificial Intelligence) in the field of Media Intelligence; strong focus on distributed and scalable computation of video processing tasks; research in the fields of Media Intelligence, video analysis, video forensics, video analytics frameworks, machine learning and Videoanalytics-as-a-scalable-Service; contributing to several national and EU funded projects (KIRAS, FP7, AAL-JP, H2020, HE and EDF); currently coordinating national security-research project defame Fakes, which focuses on the detection of deepfakes and media-manipulation in digital image and video content, with the aim of countering the continuous erosion of trust in digital content and strengthening technological verification capabilities.
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.
Silvia Poletti
Silvia Poletti is specialized in applied research in Computer Vision and AI-driven media analysis. Her work includes the detection of AI-generated images and videos, with a particular emphasis on explainable AI. Her academic background is in Applied Mathematics and Data Science. Since 2023, she has been contributing to national and international projects at AIT, and currently covers the role of Research Engineer in AIT’s unit DSAI (Data Science & Artificial Intelligence).
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.