Understanding and Reducing Online Misinformation Across 16 Countries on Six Continents, 27/1/2022

Την Πέμπτη 27 Ιανουαρίου 2022 και ώρα 5:00 μμ θα πραγματοποιηθεί διαδικτυακή διάλεξη με ομιλητή τον διακεκριμένο καθηγητή David Rand, Erwin H. Schell Professor and Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.

Θέμα: Understanding and Reducing Online Misinformation Across 16 Countries on Six Continents

Σύνδεσμος  της τηλεδιάλεξης:

https://upatras-gr.zoom.us/j/96020984114?pwd=ZTJuaFRtdTRGOW9aaC9FbmJralZTUT09
Meeting ID: 960 2098 4114               Passcode: 254846

Σύντομο Βιογραφικό

David Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, an affiliate of the MIT Institute of Data, Systems, and Society, and the director of the Human Cooperation Laboratory and the Applied Cooperation Team. Bridging the fields of cognitive science, behavioral economics, and social psychology, David’s research combines behavioral experiments run online and in the field with mathematical and computational models to understand people’s attitudes, beliefs, and choices. He focuses on illuminating why people believe and share misinformation and “fake news,” understanding political psychology and polarization, and promoting human cooperation. David received his B.A. in Computational Biology from Cornell University in 2004 and his Ph.D. in Systems Biology from Harvard University in 2009, was a post-doctoral researcher in Harvard University’s Department of Psychology from 2009 to 2013, and was an Assistant and then Associate Professor (with tenure) of Psychology, Economics, and Management at Yale University prior to joining the faculty at MIT. He has published over 175 papers in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the American Economic Review, Psychological Science, Management Science, New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Journal of Political Science, and has received widespread attention from print, radio, TV and social media outlets. He has also written popular press articles for outlets including the New York Times, Wired, New Scientist, and the Psychological Observer. He was named to Wired magazine’s Smart List 2012 of “50 people who will change the world,” chosen as a 2012 Pop!Tech Science Fellow, awarded the 2015 Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Research, chosen as fact-checking researcher of the year in 2017 by the Poyner Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network, awarded the 2020 FABBS Early Career Impact Award from the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and selected as a 2021 Best 40-Under-40 Business School Professor by Poets & Quants. Papers he has coauthored have been awarded Best Paper of the Year in Experimental Economics, Social Cognition, and Political Methodology.  

Αντιπροσωπευτικές δημοσιεύσεις

  • Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 2021, 592, 590
  • Political sectarianism in America: A poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion, and moralization poses a threat to democracy. Science, 2020, 370, 533
  • Information gerrymandering and undemocratic decisions. Nature, 2019, 573, 117
  • Credibility-enhancing displays promote the provision of non-normative public goods. Nature, 2018, 563, 245
  • Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality. PNAS, 2019, 116, 2521
  • Timing matters when correcting fake news. PNAS, 2021, 118, e2020043118
  • Shared partisanship dramatically increases social tie formation in a Twitter field experiment. PNAS, 2021, 118, e2022761118

 Περίληψη

The spread of misinformation online is a global problem that requires global solutions. To that end, we conducted an experiment in 16 countries across 6 continents (N = 33,480) to investigate predictors of susceptibility to misinformation and interventions to combat misinformation. In every country, participants with a more analytic cognitive style and stronger accuracy-related motivations were better at discerning truth from falsehood; valuing democracy was also associated with greater truth discernment whereas political conservatism was negatively associated with truth discernment in most countries. Subtly prompting people to think about accuracy was broadly effective at improving the veracity of news that people were willing to share, as were minimal digital literacy tips. Finally, crowdsourced accuracy evaluation was able to differentiate true from false headlines with high accuracy in all countries. The consistent patterns we observe suggest that the psychological factors underlying the misinformation challenge are similar across the globe, and that similar solutions may be broadly effective.


Θεόδωρος Χριστόπουλος
Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Χημείας
Πανεπιστήμιο Πατρών
Συνεργαζόμενο μέλος ΔΕΠ ΙΤΕ/ΙΕΧΜΗ