Explore talks and videos
Filter by research area, year and venue. Every filter is in the address bar, so you can share a view as a link.
Psychology & interventionsDetection methods
Measuring and Reducing Misinformation SusceptibilityJon Roozenbeek presents two major contributions: (1) the Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST), a psychometrically validated 20-item measure of how well people distinguish true from false headlines, and (2) findings that video-based inoculation interventions teaching manipulation techniques significantly improve people's ability to…
Psychology & interventionsDetection methods
Why People Believe Misinformation — and What We Can Do About ItJon Roozenbeek synthesizes eight years of misinformation research, examining why people believe false information and what interventions actually work. Grounding the analysis in the historical tobacco disinformation playbook, he argues that misinformation susceptibility stems not primarily from poor reasoning, but from media consumption…
Deepfakes & multimodalPlatforms, policy & society
Digital Forensic Expert Breaks Down Political DeepfakesFarid surveys the state of deepfake technology in the 2024 election cycle, demonstrating how synthetic images, audio, and video are weaponized to manipulate voters through fake endorsements, false statements, and inauthentic imagery. He details forensic detection techniques—perspective geometry, shadow physics, lip-sync analysis—that…
Psychology & interventionsFact-checking & verification
Psychological Inoculation Against MisinformationSander van der Linden introduces psychological inoculation as a scalable alternative to fact-checking for building societal resistance to misinformation. Drawing on inoculation theory and his flagship intervention, the Bad News game, he demonstrates how preemptively exposing people to weakened examples of six core manipulation techniques…
Psychology & interventionsDetection methods
Prebunking Misinformation on Social MediaJon Roozenbeek presents the case for prebunking—teaching people to recognize manipulation tactics before encountering false claims—rather than relying on reactive debunking. Drawing on inoculation theory from the 1960s, he argues that manipulation techniques recur across misinformation campaigns: emotional exploitation, false…
Platforms, policy & societySpread & networks
How to Demolish the Disinformation InfrastructureKate Starbird, co-principal investigator at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, discusses the state of disinformation in the aftermath of platform removals (Trump, QAnon), focusing on how moderation actions redirect harmful activity to alternative ("alt-tech") platforms rather than eliminating it. She emphasizes…
Spread & networksPlatforms, policy & society
Mis- and Disinformation During Crisis EventsKate Starbird, associate professor at UW's HCDE and co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, discusses how misinformation and disinformation spread during crisis events, with case studies from the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 election. She distinguishes between harmful misinformation (false but well-intentioned), disinformation…
Detection methodsSpread & networks
Fake News in the 2016 and 2018 Campaigns: Prevalence, Detection, and EffectsNyhan presents empirical findings on fake news consumption in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. campaigns, drawing from survey data with browser tracking to measure actual article visits. While mainstream media reported on fake news as a widespread crisis, his research shows that only ~25% of Americans visited fake news websites, and consumption…
Spread & networksBots & coordinated campaigns
5 Reasons Why Social Networks Make Us Vulnerable to MisinformationMenczer presents five fundamental factors that make social networks inherently vulnerable to misinformation spread. Information and misinformation propagate through networks at equivalent rates due to structural properties of scale-free networks combined with human cognitive limitations.
Spread & networksPlatforms, policy & society
Network PropagandaBenkler presents research on media asymmetry during the 2016 U.S. election, revealing that the right-wing media ecosystem operates under a fundamentally different structure than the center and center-left press. Rather than technological systems (Facebook algorithms, Russian interference) or individual-level factors, the key driver of…
Psychology & interventionsPlatforms, policy & society
How to Pre-Bunk Misinformation and DisinformationJon Roozenbeek discusses psychological inoculation as a scalable defense against misinformation. Rather than focusing on veracity (which becomes politically contested), he proposes teaching people to recognize predictable manipulation techniques before encountering false content.
Spread & networksDetection methods
Climate Change Misinformation: Supply, Demand, and the Challenges to ScienceLewandowsky examines climate denial through supply and demand lenses: well-funded disinformation campaigns (billions annually from fossil fuel interests and conservative think tanks) deploy cherry-picked data to infiltrate mainstream media and political rhetoric, while political ideology (conservatism, libertarianism) predisposes people…
Psychology & interventionsPlatforms, policy & society
Prebunking and Inoculating Against DisinformationVan der Linden argues that reactive fact-checking fails to scale and leaves misinformation's psychological influence intact. Instead, he proposes psychological inoculation: preemptively exposing people to weakened examples of misinformation techniques before they encounter the real thing, building cognitive resistance.
Platforms, policy & societyFact-checking & verification
How Polarization Can Help Solve the Misinformation ProblemDavid Rand presents a counter-intuitive argument: while polarization is widely viewed as exacerbating misinformation, it may actually improve crowd-sourced fact-checking systems like Twitter's Birdwatch/Community Notes. Rather than a traditional technology approach (machine learning classifiers), platforms can scale fact-checking by…
Psychology & interventionsPlatforms, policy & society
The Misinformation AgeFalse beliefs persist and spread through social factors—conformity, institutional curation of evidence, and network structure—rather than individual cognitive biases alone. O'Connor examines historical cases (variolation in 18th-century England, tobacco industry strategy) and mathematical models to show how unbiased actors (journalists,…
Deepfakes & multimodalDetection methods
The Erosion of Shared Reality in the Age of DeepfakesGenerative AI has moved from nascent to commodity in just 18 months; text-to-image, text-to-video, and real-time interactive deepfakes are now trivial to create. Humans are bad at detecting them (performing ~60% accuracy on trained tasks vs. 50% chance).
Psychology & interventionsLLMs & generative AI
Misinformation and Data LiteracyData and numbers are surprisingly effective misinformation tools because they convey false authority and precision—people trust numbers even more than words. West illustrates how charts can deliberately mislead through axis manipulation, bin-width distortion, and selective framing; these occur regularly in mainstream media and academic…