📣 Yale workshop, Oct 16-17! 📣 How could/should content ranking work? What's new in content moderation? How can platforms promote civility? Hosted by Yale's Institute for Foundations of Data Science (FDS). Great speakers! Submit posters by 9/22! Spread the word! yalefds.swoogo.com/socialalgori...

It’s not that “the misinfo problem” is made up. It is just harder – and messier – than we thought. Rather than throw up our hands, we MUST adapt our paradigms to meet the moment.

Read more -> www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

2 – Study behavior - not just belief
Many ppl see falsehoods, but who acts and when? Esp harmful acts like dangerous alt medicine or mob vandalism

3 – Test interventions in fuzzy settings, not just black/white true/false content

This means 3 shifts for misinfo researchers:

1–Discover misleading content from the bottom up. e.g. sample climate messages test which increase disbelief in climate change

It’s time to reframe “the misinfo problem”: Instead of “Why do people believe fake news?” we need to study
- What leads to misperceptions
- How do they impact real-world behavior
- What interventions actually help reduce misperceptions

There IS a problem: Misperceptions–eg election denialism, vax and climate skepticism–are common & impactful. But problem is less “Pope Endorses Trump” style fake news, more stories like these 👇

Not false, but misleading – and massively popular (see
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...)

People are worried re fake news, BUT studies show that outright false news is rare w limited impact. Critics say this means misinfo is a not a problem and we should stop studying it.

We disagree!

New in TiCS w @dgrand.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social

It’s been ~10yrs since misinfo research exploded but our paradigms are stuck in the post-2016 “fake news” model

Time for new approaches:
o True/False → Content that misleads
o Belief → Behavior
o Eval interventions in ambiguous settings

🚨 Predoc at Microsoft Research 🚨

Do you have strong front-end programming and statistics skills but need research experience before heading off to graduate school for a computational social science PhD? Apply now for this summer!

www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

Thrilled to be hosting the 3rd MEEW (Media Effects Empirical Workshop) at Columbia again. Hope to see some of you there! RSVP link is available at: sites.google.com/view/columbi...

New WP!
The illusory truth effect (repetition -> belief) is core to psych of beliefs, & thought to be a deep bias impacting misinfo, persuasion & advertising

Why would cognition include such a flaw? We argue it is a rational adaptation to high-quality info environments 🧵1/

This is my real account! I guess I have a BlueSky impersonator 😮

🚨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...