Mark Frankel

Mark Frankel is an experienced digital media and communications professional with more than two decades of experience in journalism and content creation and an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science in Political Theory. Between 1999 and 2018 he worked as a producer and editor for BBC News. As Social Media Editor he was responsible for a number of the Corporation’s largest and most successful social media channels and the management of a dedicated User Generated Content (UGC) team in the newsroom. This period coincided with a rapid expansion of the use of social media by news organisations and an accompanying focus on the rise of misinformation on these platforms. The UGC team helped develop new initiatives to champion fact-checking on digital platforms, assisting journalists in the newsroom to verify eyewitness testimony and the sourcing of reliable contributions across a host of breaking and developing news stories. In 2018 Mark Frankel was invited to participate in a Knight Nieman Visiting Research Fellowship at Harvard University where he conducted research into the opportunities and pitfalls for journalists seeking stories in social media groups and communities.