Mercator-Fellow from February 2026 until January 2027
Svea Eckert is one of Germany’s most distinguished investigative journalists, regularly appearing on ARD television programs (Tagesschau, Tagesthemen). As a digital expert, she presents complex tech topics clearly and engagingly on ARD’s Morgenmagazin.
During her Mercator Foundation fellowship, she is a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI). She is primarily involved in the research group “Transformation of Journalism and the Public Sphere” in Program Area 1, “Social Functions of Communication and Media.” Her project “Between Hype and Doom – Why Good Journalism on AI (Still) Falls Short” for the Stiftung Mercator examines the structural conditions under which AI reporting is produced in newsrooms (for more information about the project see on the website of Stiftung Mercator https://www.stiftung-mercator.de/en/fellows/svea-eckert/).
Svea’s investigative reporting has uncovered major scandals involving data misuse, digital surveillance, artificial intelligence (AI), deepfakes, and propaganda. Her internationally acclaimed documentaries, such as “Machtmaschine Meta” and the exposure of extensive data misuse in “The Browser Histories of Three Million Germans,” have garnered significant global attention. For the ARD documentary “Machtmaschine Meta,” Svea traced Facebook’s rise and fall, investigated cybercrime in Myanmar, and shed light on how populists abuse social media networks to influence public opinion in a series of regular short- and long-form reports. In her films for ARD, she also profiles whistleblowers such as Frances Haugen, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange.
In addition to her journalism, Svea Eckert is a sought-after moderator for high-profile events, a dynamic keynote speaker, and the host of three popular tech podcasts covering the latest developments in AI, data protection, cybersecurity, deepfakes, and digital propaganda. Recognized as an expert in data journalism and social engineering, she frequently speaks at prestigious hacker conferences like Defcon and the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC).
Svea Eckert’s outstanding investigative journalism has earned her multiple accolades, including the German Journalist Award, the Helmut Schmidt Prize, and the Surveillance Studies Prize.
