The lecturer from the Faculty of Communication Sciences at UIC Barcelona María Victoria, has been awarded a Leonardo Grant by the BBVA Foundation in order to conduct research into communication.  Her project was selected from 85 proposals presented in the Communication and Information Sciences category and from over 1,500 proposals from the 2020 call.

The research project titled “Aprendizaje mediático durante la crisis del Covid-19 en España: claves para la eficacia de los verificadores en la lucha contra la desinformación” (‘Learning from the media during the COVID-19 crisis in Spain: tools to help fact-checkers fight disinformation’), aims to empirically analyse the effect that consuming information online has on the degree of citizen disinformation, and how well fact-checkers are able to neutralise this disinformation, during the COVID-19 crisis in Spain. 

This research, which builds on the study started by María Victoria following the outbreak of coronavirus, aims to contribute ideas on how to improve fact-checker’s task of correctly educating society through the media. As such, the project has more than one academic objective: to also have an impact on society’s social, cultural and professional spheres.

The Leonardo Grants for cultural researchers and creators awarded by the BBVA Foundation are reserved for direct support for the work of cultural researchers and creators aged between 30 and 45 years old who are carrying out a personal and innovative project in their field.