Dr. Ike Picone is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Solvay Business School. He heads the research unit on Journalism, Trust and Participation research group imec-SMIT (Studies on Media, Innovation and Technology). He teaches on the subjects of journalism and democracy, journalism practice and journalism trends and technologies, mainly in the MsC in Journalism and Media in Europe. The thread within his research is the study of news use practices within the broad field of journalism studies. He is particularly interested in disruptions on the crossroad of journalism, technological innovations and democracy. He is the Chairholder of the Roularta Research Chair in Personalisation, Trust and Sustainable Media and leads the research on media participation in the Flemish Knowledge Centre on Cultural and Media Participation. He is part of the international team working on the yearly Digital News Report of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, for which his teams launched the website Nieuwsgebruik.be. His expertise has been acknowledged amongst others through his membership of the Flemish Council for Journalism and the temporary expert group on Fake News of former Belgian Minister of Digital Agenda Alexander De Croo (2019). He is a coordinating member of the EDMO BeLux hub that will help fight disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg as part of the European Digital Media Observatory local hubs network.

• Ike Picone is since April 2006 researcher at the SMIT. His research focuses on user activity in a digital and social media environment. He specializes in qualitative user research, especially semi-experimental digital ethnography, with links to Living Labs, Proxy Technology Assessment and methods like in-depth/diary/expert/laddering interviews and focus groups. http://www.ikepicone.be
• Since December 2010, Ike Picone is Senior Researcher at the IBBT-SMIT-VUB research group. In this function he is responsible for project acquisition, coordination within research projects, counseling junior researchers and valorisation. smit.vub.ac.be
• Since Octobre 2015, Ike Picone acted as Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences and Staff Member at imec-SMIT.