Online/Virtual Event

Thursday, June 2nd 2022 from 4:00pm to 5:00pm

See a recording of this webinar here.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the 2020 U.S. presidential election have highlighted the acute impact of misinformation on democracy and public health. In addition, current global political crises have illuminated a new era of information warfare, with political groups and governments weaponizing disinformation to undermine trust and democratic conversation globally. The spread of misleading information online has thus become a core societal concern.

This webinar 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—we 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. We end with a discussion of what we can do to improve the quality of information sharing and help restore trust in authoritative information sources.

About our presenters:

Rachel E. Moran, Ph.D. researches the role of trust in digital information environments and is particularly concerned with how trust is implicated in the spread of mis- and dis-information. Moran’s work has been published in Information, Communication & Society, Digital Journalism, Journalism Practice, Media, Culture & Society, and Telecommunications Policy.

Dr. Madeline Jalbert, Ph.D. researches how context and subjective experiences impact memory and judgments of truth and risk. Jalbert's work has been published in Cognition, the Journal of Applied Research in Cognition & Memory, Consciousness & Cognition, and Consumer Psychology Review.

Dr. Moran and Dr. Jalbert are both Postdoctoral Scholars at the Center for an Informed Public based within the Information School at the University of Washington.

This event was presented in partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library.