Tag: disinformation

MSU co-authored study: 10 insights to reduce vaccine hesitancy on social media

sarah JonasResearch Results

Young Anna Argyris, associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Media and Information, is part of an international team studying the detrimental effects of vaccine misinformation on social media and interventions that can increase vaccine uptake behaviors.

Location intelligence shines a light on disinformation

sarah JonasResearch Results

Using disinformation to create political instability and battlefield confusion dates back millennia. However, today’s disinformation actors use social media to amplify disinformation that users knowingly or, more often, unknowingly perpetuate. Such disinformation spreads quickly, threatening public health and safety. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent global elections have given the world a front-row seat to this form of modern warfare.

Fake and Extremely Biased Twitter Content Decreased Between 2016-2020, But Top Influencers Were More Polarized

sarah JonasResearch Results

“One side can start the polarization and keep it going forever, but it takes two sides to stop it. That’s why it easily arises, but it’s so difficult to end,” Boleslaw Szymanski said. Szymanski is the Claire & Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and director of the Network Science and Technology Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

YouTube’s credibility tags face “credibility conundrum” in fight against misinformation

sarah JonasResearch Results

While YouTube’s newly introduced tagging policy attempts to steer consumers to credible information sources on the social media platform by prioritizing credible sources in the search algorithm, individuals may still tend to rely on sources they trust for health information, like friends or even celebrities. The authors of a new commentary published in Annals of Internal Medicine refer to this as the “credibility conundrum.” What one person considers “credible,” another may not.

Penn Nursing Center Joins with 50 Leading National Organizations to Curb Infodemic of Health and Science Misinformation and Disinformation

sarah JonasAnnouncement

The creation of The Coalition for Trust in Health & Science, was formally launched during the 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The alliance, which includes Penn Nursing’s NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health, was formed to unite leading organizations from across the entire health ecosystem to advance trust and factual science-based decision-making.

Rensselaer Researcher To Follow the Trail of Misinformation

sarah JonasAnnouncement

On 9/11, lawmakers from both parties unified in their response. Just over 20 years later, Congress is distinctly partisan, clashing on everything from the January 6 insurrection to COVID to climate change. Why? Many blame widespread and widely believed misinformation and disinformation. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Boleslaw Szymanski, Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, is part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers examining the flow of (mis)information in social media.

Mass shootings: Conservative, liberal #socialmedia users starting to agree — enough is enough, says @UNLV researcher

sarah JonasExpert Pitch

Schoolchildren huddled in Uvalde, Tex. classrooms as classmates and teachers are cut down by a rogue gunman. A peaceful weekend afternoon at a Buffalo, N.Y. grocery store interrupted by a white supremacist who sprays the aisles of elderly, predominantly African American weekend shoppers with an AR-15 style rifle. Only five months into the year, these attacks tallied as the 198th and 214th U.

These red flags can let you know when you’re in an online echo chamber

sarah JonasResearch Results

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have identified specific elements of tone and style in online speech that are linked to hyperpartisan echo chambers. These language markers could also prove useful for flagging spaces where disinformation may be likely to emerge.

As COVID-19 and Online Misinformation Spread, Children and Teens Were Poisoned with Hand Sanitizer and Alcoholic Drinks

sarah JonasResearch Results

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, as false health information spread on social media, the number of children and teens poisoned with hand sanitizer or alcoholic beverages surged in Iran. These poisonings resulted in hundreds of hospitalizations and 22 deaths. Misinformation circulating on social media included the false suggestion that consuming alcohol (methanol) or hand sanitizer (ethanol or isopropyl alcohol) protected against COVID-19 infection (it does not). A major alcohol poisoning outbreak sickened nearly 6,000 Iranian adults, of whom 800 died. It was not known, however, to what extent children and adolescents were affected. For the study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, investigators compared pediatric hospitalizations for ethanol and methanol poisoning during the early COVID-19 pandemic in Iran with the same period the previous year. They also looked at types of exposure and how those were linked to the children’s ages and clinical outcomes.

FSMB: Spreading COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation May Put Medical License at Risk

sarah JonasAnnouncement

The Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors released statement in response to a dramatic increase in the dissemination of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and disinformation by physicians and other health care professionals on social media platforms, online and in the media.

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog – or a fake Russian Twitter account

sarah JonasResearch Results

This study investigates how successful Russian Internet Research Agency Twitter accounts built the followings that were central to their disinformation campaigns around the 2016 US presidential election. Many legacy media outlets played an unwitting role in the growth, according to the findings.

Drowning in Disinformation

sarah JonasResearch Results

The use and spread of disinformation—false or misleading information intended to deceive people—is being amplified and accelerated at an alarming rate on the internet via social media. In a white paper for the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC), researchers from Columbia Engineering, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of Colorado, and Arizona State University outline steps to begin dealing with the disinformation problem.