Dr Sam Martin is a digital sociologist and social data scientist at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research sits at the intersection of digital society, public health, and AI-mediated communication, with a particular focus on how social media discourse shapes trust, risk perception, and decision-making.

Sam’s Fellowship investigates how AI-generated visual content spreads and shapes vaccine misinformation across social media platforms. She is developing a new methodological framework, Synthetic Discourse Analysis, which combines large-scale social listening and AI detection with human-in-the-loop qualitative discourse analysis to trace how synthetic content moves from creation to circulation and becomes embedded in public conversation. The project produces evidence, tools, and training resources to support digital literacy, community resilience, and evidence-informed policy responses in the UK.

Sam brings over a decade of experience analysing large-scale social media data in global and public health contexts. She has led and contributed to research for organisations including the University of Oxford, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, University College London, and UNICEF, and her work has informed policy discussions on vaccine confidence, online harms, and digital trust. Alongside her academic research, she is known for developing innovative, community-centred methods that bridge computational analysis with lived experience and qualitative insight.

Meet our other Smart Data Research UK Fellows.