With the increase of misinformation and disinformation on the internet and social media, our brains struggle to process what we’re seeing and whether an image, a video clip or a story is real or not.
Faculty members Jenny Stromer-Galley and Jason Davis have studied the trends and created tools to help discern what’s real and what is synthetic when it comes to content posted online and on social media.
Stromer-Galley is an expert in political campaigns and misinformation and is a professor in the School of Information Studies; Davis is an expert on misinformation and disinformation detection. He is a research professor with the Office of Research and Creative Activity in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and is also co-director of the Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab.
“Depending on where people are getting their information, the quality and credibility of that information could be quite low,” Stromer-Galley says. “It leaves the public more vulnerable to state actors who are trying to engage in disinformation campaigns or U.S.-based malignant actors who are trying to manipulate the public for their own ends.”
“Our brains have not evolved as fast as the technology, and so we are still as vulnerable as we ever were to the same sorts of approaches at being deceived, intentionally or unintentionally,” Davis says. “With this new digital landscape and digital speed and scale, we need digital tools to help us protect ourselves from ourselves sometimes, and sometimes from that malicious information ecosystem.”
On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Stromer-Galley and Davis offer up tips and tools you can use to help spot misinformation, share advice to help us be better-informed consumers of information and social media, and analyze the latest research on misinformation trends in the upcoming presidential election.