Our mission is to resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society, and strengthen democratic discourse.

RESEARCH

An image collage featuring the X logo, plus a selection of tweets and graphics.

The ‘new elites’ of X: Identifying the most influential accounts engaged in Hamas/Israel dialogue 

RAPID RESEARCH REPORT  |  10.20.2023

In a CIP Rapid Research Report, we examine how a small group of users on the platform formerly known as Twitter are responsible for a significant amount of the content seen in the discourse around the current conflict.  

EDUCATION

High school students from across Washington participate in MisinfoDay 2023 workshops and activities 

EVENTS | MARCH 2023

Approximately 700 Washington high school students, teachers, librarians and other educators participated in MisinfoDay 2023 educational workshops and activities across three in-person events in March at the University of Washington in Seattle and Washington State University in Pullman and Vancouver. The annual MisinfoDay program, co-presented through an ongoing statewide partnership between UW’s Center for an Informed Public and WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, included educational gaming activities, workshops and presentations designed to help students become better evaluators of information, improve data-reasoning and factchecking skills and understand how to navigate complicated information environments online.

Close up shot of a hand holding a tabletop game card.

Break-free in a misinformation themed escape room

RESOURCES 

Loki’s Loop games, including the Euphorigen Investigation, immerse people in an interactive escape room of manipulated media, social media bots, deepfakes, and other forms of deception to learn about misinformation. These games, a research project from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public in partnership with the UW Technology & Social Change Group, UW GAMER Research Group and Puzzle Break, are designed to improve people’s awareness of misinformation tactics and generate reflection on the emotional triggers and psychological biases that make misinformation so powerful. Loki’s Loop games are available for libraries, schools, and organizations with an educational mission, in both online and in-person versions.

RESEARCH

‘Spotlight tweets: A lens for exploring attention dynamics within online sensemaking during crisis events’
PUBLICATIONS  |  JANUARY 2023

This paper, recently accepted for publication by ACM Transactions on Social Computing and written by Kaitlyn Zhou, Tom Wilson and CIP co-founders Kate Starbird and Emma S. Spiro, introduces the concept of a spotlight social media post — a post that receives an unexpected burst of attention — and explore how such posts reveal salient aspects of online collective sensemaking and attention dynamics during a crisis event, specifically, the online conversation surrounding a false missile alert in Hawaii in January 2018. Through a mixed-methods analysis and visualizations, their research uncovers mechanisms that lead to rapid attention gains, such as spotlighting — when a user with existing influence confers attention by sharing others’ content with their audience. They also highlight how spotlight social media posts (specifically spotlight tweets) are distinct from other heavily-shared content and that they offer insight into previously overlooked patterns in information exchange.

Auditing Google’s search headlines as a potential gateway to misleading content: Evidence from the 2020 U.S. elections
PUBLICATIONS  |  SEPTEMBER 2022

In a paper published in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, “Auditing Google’s Search Headlines as a Potential Gateway to Misleading Content: Evidence from the 2020 U.S. Election,” a team of CIP-affiliated researchers, co-led by Himanshu Zade and Morgan Wack with co-authors Yuanrui Zhang, Kate Starbird, Ryan Calo, Jason Young, and Jevin D. West, examine Google search results pages which contained a disproportionate amount of undermining-trust content when compared to alternative SERP verticals (search results, stories, and advertisements).” The researchers found that “video headlines served to be a notable pathway to content with the potential to undermine trust.” 

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featured resource

CIP’s Madeline Jalbert and Rachel E. Moran featured in Metropolitan New York Library Council Info Lit 101 webinar on mis- and disinformation  
EDUCATION | 06.30.2022

This “Info Lit 101” webinar from the Metropolitan New York Library Council explores why misinformation and disinformation spread online. Drawing from academic research across a wide variety of disciplines — from social psychology to journalism to information science — CIP postdoctoral fellows Madeline Jalbert and Rachel E. Moran, explore what makes misinformation so compelling, how social media platforms undermine our ability to spot falsehoods, and why we are all vulnerable to believing and sharing misinformation. They end with a discussion of what we can do to improve the quality of information sharing and help restore trust in authoritative information sources.

CIP Updates

 

 

“It’s one of the most  important problems of our time that we as a society need to solve. This is not a left or right issue. This is an issue that transcends political boundaries. Everyone wants to get this right.”

— Jevin West, Co-Founder and Inaugural Director

 

CONFRONTING MISINFORMATION

The spread of misinformation is among the most pressing challenges of our time. New platforms for human interaction and information sharing have opened the door to misinformation, disinformation and other forms of networked manipulation, which not only mislead and create divisions, but also diminish trust in democratic institutions such as science and journalism. The nonpartisan Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington brings diverse voices from across industry, government, nonprofits and other institutions together to confront the problem through our research, education, policy and engagement efforts. Learn More

WHAT WE DO

RESEARCH

We support cutting-edge research with a strong focus on research to practice, which spans disciplines from sociology to information science and law.

EDUCATION

We educate information consumers across the demographic landscape in order to make more informed decisions.

LAW & POLICY

We address information policy through generative analyses of the legal frameworks and the available levers for intervention.

ENGAGEMENT

We engage directly with the public in collaboration with our partners, libraries and community leaders.

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