In a @Poynter article, MediaWise director Alex Mahadevan writes that despite the ongoing legal and political attacks that academic researchers studying mis- and disinformation have been facing, he's "hopeful knowing how determined academics are to keep up their work in 2024," including @uwcip co-founder @katestarbird
https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/misinformation-trends-2023-predictions-2024/
The Washington Post has two new stories citing a recently released rapid research report from my colleagues at the @uwcip examining the "new elites" of the X platform.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/27/x-twitter-elite-hamas-accounts-london-georgia/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/27/elon-musk-twitter-x-anniversary/
Here's our team's report from last week: https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/10/20/new-elites-twitter-x-most-influential-accounts-hamas-israel/
As @uwcip research scientist @mikecaulfield recently told @politifact in an interview, the "tools that researchers would generally use to answer a question like ‘is there more or less misinformation’ have been taken away" since X, formerly known as Twitter, made big changes earlier this year to restrict access to its API: https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/oct/23/how-elon-musk-ditched-twitters-safeguards-and-prim/
In their @uwcip rapid research report, Caulfield and Starbird also examined Twitter/X discourse around the Lahaina fires on Maui. They write: "Both during the fires themselves and in the aftermath, X discourse has leaned into conspiracism, with much of the discourse centering around theories the fires may have been deliberate." [3/3]
Read their report: https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/08/31/youtube-lahaina-wildfires-causes/
#UWCIP #Wildifires #Misinformation #MisinformationResearch #SocialMedia #Maui #Lahaina
The Lahaina wildfires were still raging as the first questions about whether they might have been “deliberately set” emerged online. Though all current evidence points to an accidental start, poten…
Caulfield and Starbird write: “Given past research about some of the failings of YouTube search and recommendations, the strong performance of the search engine during an unfolding event was a welcome surprise, and adds to recent research showing that YouTube’s algorithms do not currently seem to be a driver of new viewers to extremist or alternative media content.” [2/3]
"As researchers and journalists and people that care about transparency and understanding what's going on, it's much harder today to understand what's going on on social media than it was three years ago," @uwcip director @katestarbird said in a recent Public Health Connects conversation with WA Secretary of Health Umair Shah about Starbird's research into how rumors, mis- and disinformation spread online.
Learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2t5S1Ziv0Y
In a new article in The Atlantic, "Nextdoor Has an Election Misinformation Problem," @uwcip legal fellow Eli Sanders examines a situation from Mercer Island, WA where some community moderators say that the social network is being exploited for political gain.
In a recently published Issues in Science and Technology article, @uwcip co-founders Emma Spiro and @katestarbird explore how decades-old research about how and why people share rumors is even more relevant today in a world with social media.
Spiro and Starbird write: "The study of rumors, which surged around World War II, is still very relevant."
➡️ Read more: https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/05/19/spiro-starbird-rumors/
In “Rumors have rules,” the CIP’s Emma S. Spiro and Kate Starbird explore how decades-old research about how and why people share rumors is even more relevant today in a world with social med…
From the article co-authored by Spiro and Starbird: "Certainly, communication has changed dramatically since party-line telephone calls and black-and-white television, but scholarship from that era holds critical insights that are essential to the digital era. The study of rumors, which surged around World War II, is still very relevant."
https://issues.org/rumors-research-misinformation-spiro-starbird/
“The first rule of a good online community user interface is to 'help the helpers.′ This is the opposite of that,” @uwcip research scientist @mikecaulfield said in an interview with the Associated Press. “It takes a community of people who want to help boost good information, and robs them of the tools to make fast, accurate decisions.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia's elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity.
Center for an Informed Public
Michael Grass
