News coverage from July 2025 about the Center for an Informed Public and CIP-affiliated research and researchers.
- NBC News (July 18, 2025): “I want to know what’s in the Epstein files. But there could be a price.”
In a piece examining the conspiracy theory dynamics around Jeffrey Epstein files, NBC News correspondent Brandy Zadrozny interviewed CIP graduate research assistant Stephen Prochaska, a UW Information School doctoral candidate Stephen Prochaska about the processes where people collaborate to interpret ambiguous evidence and create narratives. As Zadrozny writes: “Sometimes known as participatory misinformation, the goal isn’t necessarily to uncover truths, but to create content that resonates with the community’s existing beliefs and to transform complex, sometimes totally unrelated information into pertinent, digestible and often misleading lines that can move the story along.”
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- iNews (July 21, 2025): “Q&A: Ryan Calo on why ‘we need to take a page from the Amish’”
The University of Washington Information School featured a Q&A feature with CIP co-founder Ryan Calo, a professor with a joint appointment in the UW School of Law and Information School.
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- Psychology Today (July 24, 2025): “Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?”
A column by Western Washington University psychology professor Ira Hyman cites scholarship from CIP co-founders Kate Starbird and Emma Spiro about the dynamics of rumors and sensemaking during a crisis and times of uncertainty.
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- Platformer (July 24, 2025) “Is anyone left to defend trust and safety?”
Casey Newton’s Platformer newsletter cited “The end of trust and safety?: Examining the future of content moderation and upheavals in professional online safety efforts,” a recently published peer-reviewed journal article in the Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems that was co-authored by a group of CIP-affiliated researchers co-led by senior research scientist Rachel Moran-Prestridge and graduate research assistant Joseph S. Schafer.
