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Psychology & interventionsDetection methods
How technology can fight extremism and online harassmentYasmin Green, head of Jigsaw, presents two technological interventions addressing online harms rooted in human psychology. For radicalization: the "Redirect Method" (piloted 2016) uses online advertising to intercept users searching for extremist content (e.g., "How do I join ISIS?") and show them counter-propaganda videos from credible…
Psychology & interventionsFact-checking & verification
Why People Believe Fake News, Myths & Conspiracy TheoriesBrendan Nyhan surveys research on why people hold false beliefs about politics, health, and conspiracy theories despite exposure to corrective information. He identifies two core mechanisms: selective exposure (people seek out information matching their worldview) and selective acceptance (people dismiss contradictory information through…
Spread & networksDeepfakes & multimodal
Don't Blame Bots, Fake News Is Spread by HumansA comprehensive talk covering the scale of misinformation campaigns on social media (ranging from Syrian hackers compromising the AP's Twitter account to Russian interference in the 2016 US election), empirical findings on how false news spreads faster than truth, and emerging threats from synthetic media (deepfakes) created via…
Bots & coordinated campaignsSpread & networks
Social Bots and the Spread of Fake NewsA presentation on how social bots amplify misinformation spread on Twitter and other social platforms. The speaker discusses bot detection techniques (network structure, user behavior, temporal patterns), case studies of coordinated bot campaigns (2010–2016 elections, vaccine debates, Brexit), findings showing bots act as "igniters" in…
Spread & networksBots & coordinated campaigns
The Truth About False NewsA presentation discussing findings from a large-scale longitudinal study of false and true news spread on Twitter (2006–2017). The research found that false news spreads further, faster, and more broadly than truth by orders of magnitude—not primarily due to bots, but because humans are more susceptible to sharing novel information, and…
Fact-checking & verificationPsychology & interventions
How to separate fact and fiction onlineMarkham Nolan, editor of Storyful, explains how journalists use open-source intelligence tools to verify content in the age of information overload. Through real-world case studies—including fake Hurricane Sandy photos and identifying locations in Syrian conflict videos—he demonstrates that truth-seeking requires human judgment combined…
Spread & networksPlatforms, policy & society
Beware online filter bubblesAlgorithmic personalization on major platforms like Facebook and Google has created "filter bubbles" — personalized information universes that show us what we're predicted to like rather than what we need to see. This invisible algorithmic gatekeeping threatens democracy and information diversity by isolating us in narrow perspectives,…
Psychology & interventionsPlatforms, policy & society
How We Create Our Own Fake NewsBobby Duffy's "Perils of Perception" research (100,000+ interviews across 40 countries) reveals that people systematically misestimate social realities by factors of 2–3×. Using concrete examples (teenage pregnancy, murder rates, immigration, social media adoption), Duffy traces these perception gaps to four psychological mechanisms: (1)…
Psychology & interventionsDetection methods
Why People Fall for MisinformationJoseph Isaac traces how misconceptions persist using the tongue map myth as exemplar: David Hänig's 1901 research found modest taste-sensitivity variations across tongue regions, but through translation barriers, visual simplification, and our preference for clean narratives, it became the false claim that sweetness is imperceptible at…
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 & interventionsDetection methods
Towards psychological herd immunity: Cross-cultural prebunking against COVID-19 misinformationJon Roozenbeek presents a cross-cultural randomized controlled trial testing two psychological interventions against COVID-19 misinformation. Comparing the "Go Viral" game (technique-based inoculation) against UNESCO infographics and a Tetris control condition across 1,777 participants in the UK, Germany, and France, he demonstrates that…
Spread & networksDetection methods
Computational Propaganda and the Lie MachinesPhilip Howard discusses his book The Lie Machines and describes computational propaganda as an industrialized system combining organized disinformation campaigns (social component) with social media algorithms (technical component). He outlines three production stages — creation, dissemination, and long-term marketing — and argues that…
Detection methodsPsychology & interventions
From WMDs to the vaccine-autism myth: Understanding misperceptions in politics and health careNyhan presents research on why people hold and resist correcting false beliefs, spanning political misperceptions (Iraq WMDs, Obama birth certificate, death panels) and health misinformation (vaccine-autism link). His core finding is that simple fact-based corrections often fail and sometimes backfire—especially among politically…
Spread & networksBots & coordinated campaigns
The Spread of Misinformation in Social MediaMenczer presents a framework for understanding misinformation spread through social networks as an inevitable consequence of network structure and human cognitive limitations rather than platform design failures. He discusses how structural properties—scale-free topology, finite attention, information overload—create vulnerabilities…
Detection methodsPlatforms, policy & society
Truth DecayTruth Decay—the erosion of reliance on facts and data in policy-making and civil discourse—is not new but cyclically emerges during periods of technological disruption in media. Kavanagh traces this through yellow journalism, radio demagoguery, cable news, and now social media.
Psychology & interventionsDetection methods
The Psychology of MisinformationEcker presents evidence that misinformation continues to influence reasoning even after people receive, believe, and remember corrections. Drawing on cognitive psychology, he demonstrates that corrections are only partially effective—typically halving (not eliminating) reliance on misinformation.
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.
Psychology & interventionsPlatforms, policy & society
Psychological Inoculation Against Misinformation (Trinity College, Cambridge)Van der Linden presents psychological inoculation as an alternative to reactive fact-checking. Rather than debunking false claims after people have been exposed, inoculation preemptively builds resistance to misinformation techniques.
Psychology & interventionsFact-checking & verification
How You Can Help Combat Fake NewsA researcher presents empirical findings challenging the "motivated reasoning" account of why people believe false headlines. Instead, a multi-study investigation with 25,000+ participants shows that critical thinking and cognitive reasoning—not willful bias—are the primary determinants of misinformation susceptibility.
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,…
LLMs & generative AIFact-checking & verification
Factuality Challenges in the Era of Large Language ModelsNakov surveys the twin challenges posed by large language models (LLMs) to misinformation detection and fact-checking: (1) LLMs generate coherent, persuasive, and factually-unreliable text—hallucinations are pervasive and often hidden; (2) LLMs can be weaponized to automate misinformation production at scale through paraphrasing, persona…