Building a New Multi-Disciplinary Research Center at the University of Washington During a Pandemic
January 1, 2020
When 2020 got underway a year ago, the Center for an Informed Public was officially only a few weeks old. “If we care about common goals — things like safe communities, justice, equal opportunity — we have to care also about facts, truth and accuracy,” University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce said during the CIP’s Dec. 3, 2019 launch event on UW’s Seattle campus. “Misinformation can be weaponized. It has been weaponized to divide us and to weaken us.” Looking back on a tumultuous year, Cauce’s words that day were especially prescient.
For all those assembled on stage that day, it was impossible to know just how much the world would change in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic and just how vital the CIP’s mission and work to resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society and strengthen democratic discourse would be during what ended up being an incredibly tumultuous, uncertain and challenging year.
Early in 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis was rapidly turning into a far-reaching pandemic, building a new multi-disciplinary research center at the University of Washington necessitated shifting to remote work and research collaboration and quickly adapting planned in-person events for virtual engagement, all the while helping to bring clarity and informed expertise to a confusing time clouded by rampant misinformation.
Looking back at the work we did in 2020 supporting our four founding Research, Education, Engagement and Law & Policy pillars, the Center for an Informed Public’s five cofounders and principal investigators — Ryan Calo, a School of Law professor; Chris Coward, an iSchool senior principal research scientist and director of the Technology & Social Change Group; Emma Spiro, an iSchool associate professor; Kate Starbird, a Human Centered Design & Engineering associate professor, and Jevin West, an iSchool associate professor and the CIP’s inaugural director) — and the rest of the CIP’s team, including staff, affiliated faculty members and researchers, postdoctoral scholars, PhD and graduate students and undergraduate research assistants, were able to accomplish a lot during a busy year while expanding our reach and helping to build a strong foundation for the CIP’s continued growth and impact in the future.
As we continue to pursue our work and mission to resist misinformation and create a more informed public, the following report provides an overview of key highlights and accomplishments from the previous year.