RESOURCES
The Center for an Informed Public is an interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Washington dedicated to resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society and strengthening democratic discourse.
CIP Projects & Resources
‘Think more, share less: Mini MisinfoDay’
This 2-hour virtual workshop, hosted April 25, featured a keynote presentation on misinformation and generative AI from CIP co-founder Jevin West, a UW Information School associate professor; a talk from CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield that explored tips and tricks for navigating online search results; a presentation from Northwest Public Broadcasting journalist Anna King, who discussed her investigative podcast Ghost Herd and the reporting processes journalists use to wrangle facts and pursue the truth; and a presentation from CIP postdoctoral scholar Rachel Moran-Prestridge and UW Information School doctoral candidate Sarah Nguyễn that shared key highlights from their research into how misinformation spread within and among Vietnamese diasporic communities in the United States.
The Etiology of Medical Misinformation
In an April 2023 workshop presentation, the “Etiology of Medical Misinformation,” hosted by the Network of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine, CIP co-founder Jevin West discusses the dynamics of medical misinformation.
AARP Washington Telephone Town Hall: Elections in WA with WA Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and CIP co-founder Jevin West
In this June 2022 telephone town hall hosted by AARP Washington, Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and University of Washington Center for an Informed Public co-founder Jevin West, a UW Information School associate professor, discuss voting procedures in Washington state and how to spot mis- and disinformation about voting and elections.
Webinar: Metropolitan New York Library Council InfoLit 101 (Misinformation and disinformation)
This June 2022 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 —Center for an Informed Public postdoctoral fellows Rachel E. Moran and Madeline Jalbert 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.
Webinar: Why we fall for misinformation
In this May 2022 webinar hosted by The Communications Network, CIP postdoctoral fellow Madeline Jalbert and CIP director Kate Starbird, a UW Human Centered Design & Engineering associate professor, discuss what communications professionals can do about mis- and dis- information. From their research in crisis informatics, collective sensemaking online, and cognitive and social psychology, Starbird and Jalbert explain how mis- and disinformation influences what we see and believe online and in our lives; why we’re all vulnerable to misinformation; why it can sometimes be difficult for information consumers to believe verified, credible facts; and what communications professionals should understand about the dynamics of mis- and disinformation online.
COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation and Narratives Webinar
In this 21-min video presentation recorded in May 2021, CIP postdoctoral fellow Kolina Koltai discusses COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and hesitancy narratives.
Which News Stories Can You Trust?
The Trusted Journalism Partnership — a coalition of nonpartisan academic and media organizations including the Center for an Informed Public — is an information campaign designed to help people aged 65 and over sort fact from fiction in news reporting. Learn the 8 Trust Indicators that can help you spot real, trustworthy journalism.
‘Calling Bullshit’
To help combat the spread of misinformation, Center for an Informed Public director Jevin West and CIP faculty member Carl Bergstrom developed a class at the University of Washington titled “Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World.” The goal of the class is to teach students and the public, at large, how to spot and refute BS wrapped in numbers, statistics, and algorithms. View the first series of lectures from the class on YouTube or find more resources at CallingBullshit.org.
Their class helped inspired an August 2020 book, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World (Penguin Random House).
Kate Starbird on Crises and Disinformation
In this 60-second video segment, recorded in February 2019, CIP cofounder Kate Starbird, an UW Human Centered Design & Engineering associate professor, discusses how disinformation can change and affect real-world crises and the ways “uncertainty becomes an opportunity for people who want to spread disinformation, to put that out into an information space that already has this uncertain quality.”
Deepfakes and the U.S. Elections
This recording of a Sept. 1, 2020 virtual public forum, co-presented by the UW Center for an Informed Public and Microsoft‘s Defending Democracy Program, features discussions about the emerging threat of malicious synthetic media, often referred to as “deepfakes,” and the challenges they pose to democratic institutions and processes. Our panel of experts combine perspectives from technology, journalism, and civil society to explain what deepfakes are, why we should care about them, and what individuals can do to counter their impact.
Spot the Deepfakes Quiz
In this interactive quiz, developed by the UW Center for an Informed Public and Microsoft‘s Defending Democracy Program in conjunction with USA TODAY and Sensity, learn more about deepfakes and other examples of synthetic media and test your abilities to spot deepfake images.
Facts in the Time of COVID-19
During a pandemic it’s more important than ever to avoid falling for or spreading misinformation and disinformation. But with so much new and changing information, how do you know what to trust? Pacific Science Center in Seattle teamed up with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public to create a virtual exhibit designed help you navigate COVID-19 and the 24-hour news cycle.
Uncovering Reality
We’re all looking at a lot of graphs and charts during the ongoing pandemic, but which are trustworthy? Check out this virtual exhibit, created by Pacific Science Center with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, to learn more about some of the common ways data visualizations can be accidentally distorted or intentionally manipulated and why that matters.
Misinformation Webinar for K-12 Educators
This hour-long webinar, co-presented with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication in partnership with the Washington Library Association, is designed to connect school librarians with the educational resources, tools and professional insights they need to better understand where misinformation and disinformation comes from, how it’s shared and what they can do to educate students and other library users to be better information consumers.
Misinfo Day 2020 Webinar Educators
This recording of a May 2020 webinar — presented by Jevin West, director of the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, and Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver — is designed for educators interested in MisinfoDay, an annual event for high school students, educators and librarians meant to teach high school students, teachers and librarians how to identify and combat online misinformation and disinformation.
Fake News and Misinformation
Mini Lecture Series
Find insights from subject matter experts in academia and industry in this mini lecture series recorded in April 2018. Topics include strategies for cleaning up our polluted information system (CIP’s Jevin West), research conducted on online rumors in the context of crisis response (CIP’s Kate Starbird), and weaponized AI propaganda (Berit Anderson).
Stand With the Facts
This spring, KUOW public radio in Seattle partnered with the Center for an Informed Public on a virtual event series focused on misinformation, how to spot it and stop its spread. On KUOW’s Stand With the Facts information page, check out extended interviews with CIP researchers and a Stand With the Facts toolkit.
Coexisting With COVID-19: COVID and the Truth
The 24-hour news cycle can be overwhelming. While we want to be informed, we also want to know that what we are learning is accurate and our information sources are trustworthy. As part of the University of Washington Graduate School’s Public Lectures series “Coexisting with COVID-19,” the Center for an Informed Public’s Jevin West and Kate Starbird talk about how we can be best informed in the face of often conflicting information.
TEDx Talk: ‘Unmasking Misinformation’
In this July 2020 TEDx talk, Chris Coward suggests that everyone needs to become familiar with the basics of how mis- and disinformation works. He takes us on a tour of several disinformation tactics and discusses why these have been so effective in changing people’s beliefs. He concludes with some tips for more safely engaging with potentially problematic information. Chris Coward, a senior principal research scientist at the UW Information School, is a Center for an Informed Public cofounder and serves as director of the Technology & Social Change Group.
TEDx Talk: ‘We’re drowning in BS but you can learn to fight back.’
In this engaging March 2018 TEDx talk, CIP director Jevin West teaches us to “call bullshit.” West shows how dangerous and misleading some news stories can be, and explains that these news stories are fairly easy to create but harder to clean because the digital networks used for dissemination.
Which Face Is Real?
AI-enabled learning algorithms are now able to easily and quickly generate synthetic “photographs” of people. Your task: guess which one is real. Created by the University of Washington’s Calling Bullshit project, whichfaceisreal.com, aims to raise awareness around the ease at which facial identities can be faked, manufactured and disseminated digitally.
CIP-Recommended Resources
CTRL-F
CTRL-F, a project from Canadian nonprofit CIVIX, is an extension of the SIFT Method, a method for information literacy. The project provides simple skills for sorting through facts and misinformation online. Help students become robust fact checkers and combat misinformation with a verification skills module themed around COVID-19.
‘Fake News. It’s Complicated.’
This article from First Draft News provides a few ways to better understand the information ecosystem. It looks at the different kinds of misinformation and disinformation being created and shared, the motivations behind those who create content, and how they disseminate information. The typology of seven distinct content types and the matrix of intent are valuable tools.
Critical Disinformation Studies Syllabus
This syllabus, developed by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Center for Information, Technology and Public Life (CITAP), rethinks disinformation research by incorporating history, inequality, power and culture. We argue that disinformation is a key way in which whiteness in the United States has been reinforced and reproduced, as well as heteronormativity and class privilege.
KQED Teach: Media Academy for Educators
This instructor-led KQED Media Academy course helps empower students to effectively assess the accuracy and quality of information across media formats and understand the techniques content creators use to shape their messages.
The Trust Project
The Trust Project is an international consortium of news organization building standards of transparency and working with technology platforms to affirm and amplify journalism’s commitment to transparency, accuracy, inclusion and fairness. The Trust Project has designed a system of “Trust Indicators” — that is, standardized disclosures about the news outlet, journalist and the commitments behind their work.
Red Pen Reviews
Red Pen Reviews uses a structured expert review method to deliver the most informative, consistent and unbiased nutrition and health book reviews available, free of charge. Reviewers all have a master’s degree, equivalent or higher in a relevant field of science. Each book review is the work of two experts: a primary reviewer who writes the review, and a peer reviewer who checks the work.
Zotero Reference Library
Use this comprehensive and curated list produced by CIP researchers to find current interdisciplinary research on misinformation and disinformation.
‘Lexicon of Lies’
From “misinformation” to “propaganda” to “parody,” use this report from independent nonprofit research organization Data & Society to better understand and describe the accuracy and relevance of media content. This report unpacks specific origins and applications of different forms of problematic information.