Mahama Tawat

Mahama Tawat is a Research Associate at the Institute for Research, Socio-Economic Development and Communication – IRESCO (Cameroon) and the Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare at Malmö University (Sweden).

He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Otago in New Zealand and other postgraduate degrees from Stockholm, Malmö and Dalarna Universities in Sweden and the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon. His academic endeavors’ revolve around comparative social policy, comparative migration policy, peace and conflict studies and good governance.

Between 2014 and 2020, Dr. Tawat was an Assistant Professor in Public Policy and Sociology at the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University of Moscow, Russia. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany and at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. In 2016, he was appointed Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Comparative Immigration Studies of the University of California – San Diego, USA.

His publications have appeared in academic outlets such asGovernance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions,Eastern European Politics, theInternational Journal of Cultural Policyand the London School of Economics and Political Science Blogs

The Sustainable Development Goals 2030 are the flagship programme of social transformation at the global level. Because of its cross-cutting nature, the Sustainable Development Goal No 3, Good Health and Well-being lies at its heart. While many developing countries have made progress towards achieving this goal, the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to derail it.

Fake news, that is false news content that spreads even faster than authentic news through social and even public media, has been identified as a serious threat.

In my project, I study the origins, channels of diffusion, related scientific controversies as well as socio-political impact of fake news about vaccines against the covid-19 pandemic. I look primarily but not exclusively at the Cameroonian context. I aim to find common guidelines that will help various stakeholders get past these fake news.