One of my favorites paper got published 🤓 It covers a lot of ground and it’s the best summary of my views on misinformation and what to do about it. Give it a read :)
🔓 osf.io/preprints/ps...
👉 doi.org/10.1177/1461...
🧵 New report just dropped 🚨 "Fractured Reality: How Democracy Can Win the Global Struggle Over the Information Space" — from the EU Joint Research Centre, led by Mario Scharfbillig and I. A landmark read for anyone working on disinformation, platforms & democracy. 👇
1/10
Check out our latest work on how perceived fairness, effectiveness, and intrusiveness influence public support for misinformation interventions!
The Coalition for Independent Technology Research has filed a lawsuit with the @knightcolumbia.org and @protectdemocracy.org challenging a US State Department policy to revoke or deny visas of non-citizen researchers because of their work studying the societal impacts of technology. (1/4)
🚨New WP "@Grok is this true?"
We analyze 1.6M factcheck requests on X (grok & Perplexity)
📌Usage is polarized, Grok users more likely to be Reps
📌BUT Rep posts rated as false more often—even by Grok
📌Bot agreement with factchecks is OK but not great; APIs match fact-checkers
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Gosh, post 2/9 of the thread below had a link that required authentication, here is the direct link to the piece: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Grok fact-checks our paper on Grok fact-checking - and it approves!
We also found that willingness to intervene depended strongly on who posted the misinformation, with participants indicating they were much more likely to counter close contacts.
See the paper and blog post for more details: www.cmu.edu/ideas-social...
In an experiment with government analysts, a short interactive training increased reported willingness to engage in countering actions (e.g., commenting a correction, messaging the poster) when encountering misinformation on social media.
Read my latest paper on media literacy, presented at last year's SBP-BRiMS Conference!
Instead of studying whether training helps people detect misinformation, we investigate whether it increases willingness to actively intervene when people see it.
doi.org/10.1007/978-...
Finding #3: Support for user-driven responses to misinformation is widespread across the political spectrum. This suggests counter-misinformation efforts that empower everyday users may have broad public legitimacy. 4/4
Finding #2: Relationships matter. People say they’re much more likely to correct misinformation when it’s posted by someone close (friends and family) than by acquaintances or strangers. This suggests that social proximity may shape the use of interventions. 3/4
Finding #1: There’s a large gap between beliefs and actions. People strongly value fighting misinformation, but report doing less themselves than what they think others should do. Good intentions don’t always translate into action. 2/4
I wanted to highlight one of my favorite papers that I co-authored last year with Samantha Phillips. Surveying 1,000+ U.S. social media users, we examined how beliefs and relationships shape whether people ignore, report, or correct misinformation. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/4
Finding #1: There’s a large gap between beliefs and actions. People strongly value fighting misinformation, but report doing less themselves than what they think others should do. Good intentions don’t always translate into action. 2/4
🚨New WP🚨
We examine news sharing on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
🚨 New report out: the first cross-platform, cross-country baseline on misinformation in Europe
Based on large scale data analysis: ~2.6M posts (24B views) collected on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X & YouTube
science.feedback.org/first-measurement-disinformation-major-platforms-europe
Mapping the Scientific Literature on Misinformation Interventions: A Bibliometric Review (COMPASS workshop)
workshop-proceedings.icwsm.org/abstract.php...
@kingcatherine.bsky.social
Excited to have two workshop papers and one main conference paper that I've been involved in being presented at @icwsm.bsky.social! Thanks @kingcatherine.bsky.social and @evanup.bsky.social for letting me tag along. Details below.
Psychological inoculation is a very popular intervention against online misinfo, but it hasn't been tested using real-world outcomes in realistic scenarios.
In a new paper just published in PNAS Nexus, this is what we did: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Short version: It didn't really work.
New paper: Modeling the amplification of epidemic spread by individuals exposed to misinformation on social media 🧪
Simulations informed by social media data yield a worst-case bound on additional infections due to exposure to online vaccine misinfo. It's not good.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
This study examines individual-level interventions against #misinformation on social media, showing that encouraging people to respond to #misinformation can reduce its spread and prevent belief in it.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Needed: ACTION!
"...participants believe individuals should expend more effort responding to misinformation on social media than those individuals report actually doing..."
Study: Online misinformation mitigation based on current user behavior www.nature.com/articles/s41...
IU's Observatory on Social Media defends citizens from online manipulation – the opposite of censorship
osome.iu.edu/research/blo...
🚨New WP🚨
Remember Musk+Zuck+Trump+Jordan etc crying fact-checker bias b/c Reps were flagged more than Dems? We analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and guess what: posts flagged as "misleading" are 67% more likely to be written by Reps! The issue is Reps, not fact-checkers...
osf.io/preprints/ps...
After ending Meta's fact-checking partnerships, Mark Zuckerburg said that it had never been broadly accepted. According to a new poll by @bostonu.bsky.social, nearly 2 in 3 US adults agree that fact-checkers *should* verify claims on social media. A 🧵 (1/n). www.bu.edu/articles/202...
🚨OpEd+data: Meta is out of step with public opinion🚨
Zuck cut moderation b/c he said people no longer want it. But he's wrong!
We polled 1k Americans and most people, including majority of Reps:
i) want content moderation
ii) don't want Community Notes w/o fact-checkers
thehill.com/opinion/tech...
New meta-analysis shows media literacy & psychological inoculation interventions signifcantly & substantially improve (a) misinformation resilience (d = 0.60), (b) misinformation discernment (d = 0.76) and decrease sharing (d = 1.04).
Great news for science!
journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10....
Removing the fact-checking program from Meta platforms wasn't sufficient, you can now freely claim that women are "houshold objects" and that members of the LGBTQ community are "mentally ill". What a win for free speech - Zuckerberg is revealing his true colors.
www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-...
