Notices by Kate Starbird (katestarbird@mstdn.social)

Discourse around misinformation doesn't always line up w/ our research team's findings re: how falsehoods actually spread in online spaces. Here, I provide a more nuanced view, describing the problem of misinformation as one of collective sensemaking gone awry: https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/12/06/rumors-collective-sensemaking-kate-starbird/

We often see the problem of misinformation described as an issue of bad “facts” — but our research suggests the problem is not just one of bad facts, but faulty frames. Though fabrications and outright lies contribute to the challenge of misinformation, we are more often misled not by false evidence but by misinterpretations and mischaracterizations.

Revisiting this paper by Tamar Wilner and colleagues on attending to the mismatch between the speed of online information feeds and the time-intensive nature of information literacy interventions. One take-away (for me) is we need better designs of online tools and platforms to support information literacies (at speed). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3544548.3581068

@bkeegan Nextdoor is a frontier of information manipulation via motivated (and in some cases inauthentic and coordinated) moderation. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/nextdoor-local-election-misinformation-volunteer-moderation/674152/

I appreciate the WA Post drawing attention to attacks on researchers in the field of online misinformation, but there a few pieces of this story (e.g. about researchers "buckling") that just aren't accurate, at least not from my perspective at UW. I'm going to post (below) my full comment here to the Post (sent weeks ago), most of which was excluded in this piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/23/online-misinformation-jim-jordan/

Researchers studying online mis- and disinformation are experiencing a multi-faceted attack (online harassment, lawsuits, congressional investigations) — but we aren't walking away from this cirtical work: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-battle-for-better-information

@vortex_egg I had an aquantaince for a brief period of time who claimed to have an extremely high IQ. He explained his IQ situation to me over lunch one day -- which I found extremely awkward, but apparently or perhaps not surprisingly he didn't pick up on my discomfort. During the entire story, he had a large amount of mustard on his face, that he either didn't notice (unlikely) or didn't bother to remove. For some reason, this lunch came back to me while looking at this table.

Wondering if anyone has coined the term, Birdchan, yet for the future of Twitter? It slipped out in a conversation yesterday with some university comms folks who are trying to figure out what their social media strategies should be going forward.