Steven Livingston, professor of media and public affairs and founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics (IDDP) at the George Washington University, has received a Seeking Solutions for Global Challenges Award from the Fulbright Finland Foundation. The award will send Dr. Livingston to work with the Centre for Law, Identity and the European Narrative (EuroStorie CoE) at the University of Helsinki through the upcoming fall semester.
Dr. Livingston’s work focuses on the decline of public trust in the individuals and institutions previously held to be sources of factual claims that once anchored political and public life. The erosion in trust in authoritative institutions—the mainstream news media, science, academia more generally, and government agencies—can be thought of as an “epistemic crisis” that invites an embrace of conspiracy theories and disinformation, he said.