Explore news coverage from March 2022 featuring the Center for an Informed Public and CIP-affiliated research and researchers.
- PolitiFact (March 4): “As Russia invades Ukraine, misinformers exploit TikTok’s audio features to spread fake war footage”
CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield discusses how TikTok’s platform does not allow users, during a rapidly unfolding crisis like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, time to pause and vet whether information is being shared is true and reliable. “Content is often consumed in quick succession, and our critical faculties do better with a bit of a pause,” Caulfield said.***
- KUOW Public Radio (March 7): “What do you do when there’s no local news source? You make one”
CIP postdoctoral fellow Rachel E. Moran told KUOW Public Radio’s Soundside program that democratization of journalism “does test the boundaries of what is news versus what is just information or what is content. When we open those floodgates, we’re really opening them to anyone to come in and say, ‘I’m a journalist; I’ve produced journalism.’ But there’s no badge of approval. It’s not like you’re a doctor and you have to have a license to be a journalist.”***
- PolitiFact (March 11): “One America News runs conspiratorial segment claiming strike on Mariupol hospital was US false flag”
In a factecheck interview with PolitiFact about claims that a Russian air strike on a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine was a U.S. false flag operation, CIP faculty member Scott Radnitz, a UW Jackson School of International Studies associate professor, said: “This war is one of the best-covered ever, considering the wide availability of smartphones. The bombing of the hospital in Mariupol had multiple eyewitnesses and its aftermath was caught on camera.”
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- Business Insider (March 14): “Russia’s wild theories about secret bio-labs and ‘crisis actors’ in Ukraine are crafted to appeal to US conspiracists, experts say”
Tweets from CIP director and UW Human Centered Design & Engineering associate professor Kate Starbird were referenced in an Business Insider article looking at Ukraine “biolabs” conspiracy narratives.
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- The Seattle Times (March 15): “‘You can fake anything on the internet’: Professors host day to teach WA students to combat misinformation”
In a feature about MisinfoDay 2022, reporter Nina Shapiro wrote that the educational event, co-presented by the CIP and WSU’s Murrow College of Communication through a statewide partnership, “couldn’t be more perfectly timed, coming during Russia’s misinformation and disinformation campaign over the war in Ukraine that shows exactly why students and non-students alike have to stay alert.” The article features interviews with CIP founding director and UW iSchool associate professor Jevin West; CIP postdoctoral fellow Maddy Jalbert; Misinfoday coordinator Liz Crouse; and insights from CIP co-founder Kate Starbird.***
- KUOW Public Radio (March 15): “Why misinformation is ‘sticky’ and sometimes easy to fall for”
In an interview with KUOW’s Kim Malcolm during “All Things Considered,” CIP postdoctoral fellow Maddy Jalbert discusses the reasons why many people fall for misinformation, which was the topic of a MisinfoDay 2022 workshop session.***
- KUOW Public Radio (March 15): “Social media is flooded with information about Ukraine. SIFT through your sources first.”
CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield joined KUOW’s Soundside program to discuss the SIFT method for contextualizing claims online. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “[i]t’s a series of events taking place in a foreign country, there are language differences, there are sort of complex political dynamics that the average viewer or reader may not be aware of. And then of course, you know, there’s just the nature of war, propaganda.”***
- Northwest Public Broadcasting (March 15): “How to identify and battle misinformation”
NWPB journalist Dori Luzzo Gilmour visited a classroom participating in MisinfoDay 2022 at Richland High School in the Tri-Cities area.***
- Axios (March 15): “Two years of information chaos”
CIP undergraduate research assistant Joey Schafer is cited in an article featuring data about “two years of information chaos.”***
- Sydney Business Insights (March 15): “Fake fact-checking and disinformation”
The Sydney Business Insights podcast at the University of Sydney Business School interviewed CIP founding director and UW iSchool associate professor Jevin West.***
- La Presse (March 19): “Russian propaganda relayed in Quebec”
In an article in Montreal’s La Presse about Russian disinformation circulating online in Quebec, CIP director and UW HCDE associate professor Kate Starbird comments about the ways Russian disinformation can feed conspiracy theories online and within conspiratorial communities online.***
- Science (March 24): “Detecting bullshit”
CIP faculty member Carl Bergstrom, a UW Biology professor who studies evolutionary biology, is featured for his work and scholarship around the need to study the misinformation’s impact on human collective behavior as a crisis discipline, just like climate science. The article also features CIP founding director and UW iSchool associate professor Jevin West and CIP postdoctoral fellow Joe Bak-Coleman, who was the lead author on “Stewardship of global collective behavior,” which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022, included Bergstrom as one of the 17 co-authors. The article notes how “billions of online conversations are captured every year” at the CIP. If a certain piece of misinformation is identified, “you can go about measuring how it’s amplified, how fast it grows, who’s amplifying it,” West told Science. “But it is very difficult to see whether that translates into behavior, and not just behavior, but beliefs.”***
- Science (March 24): “In the line of fire”
In an article exploring the challenges of scientists being targeted for harassment, CIP postdoctoral fellow Kolina Koltai notes how the abuse stems from deep societal problems, including losing faith in health care systems and governments. “Without addressing those big societal issues that make people feel like they’re unheard, or they’re dismissed, or feeling like they’re wronged in some particular way … we’re never going to get rid of the harassment that scientists face.”***
- Grid News (March 24): “The QAnon dog whistles in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s SCOTUS hearings”
CIP postdoctoral fellow Rachel E. Moran shared insights about misinformation narratives involving child safety. “It allows misinformation spreaders to speak from a point of moral authority, painting anyone who questions their information as the bad guy.”***
- Mother Jones (March 24): “How wellness influencers became cheerleaders for Putin’s war”
In a Mother Jones article about the ways health and wellness influencers who Russian disinformation about Ukraine following familiar patterns, CIP postdoctoral fellow Rachel E. Moran shares insights about the ways Instagram influencers reaching largely female audiences have helped to spread vaccine-related mis- and disinformation. “It’s incredible how networked these conspiracy theories are,” she said. “Once you’re involved in one of the buckets of misinformation, your likelihood to believe in others is far, far amplified.”***
- National Public Radio (March 25): “How the false Russian biolab story came to circulate among the U.S. far right”
In a NPR interview, CIP faculty member Scott Radnitz, a UW Jackson School of International Studies associate professor, discusses the history of the “Ukrainian biolabs” narrative online and how it’s been resurrected with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “When it comes to the biolabs, this is an old canard,” Radnitz said.***
- The Boston Globe (March 26): “For Wu’s critics, a powerful tool: misinformation”
For an article about misinformation and false claims about the mental health of Boston’s mayor, CIP postdoctoral fellow Rachel E. Moran said that “[m]isinformation is kind of a societal mirror” and that salient misinformation “appeals to a worldview that a portion of society already holds. So a lot of misinformation becomes sticky because it reifies a lot of the problematic narratives that already exist.”***
- Gothamist / WNYC Public Radio (March 28): “When it’s not just politics: A Brooklyn race offers a warning over misinformation this election season”
In an article about local election misinformation in Brooklyn, New York, Gothamist points to the SIFT method for contextualizing claims online, developed by CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield, as a way for voters to better assess the reliability of information before sharing it online.***
- Slate (March 29): “How fringe conspiracy theories invaded the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings”
In an podcast interview with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, Stanford University’s Nate Persily references research by CIP director and UW HCDE associate professor Kate Starbird into “participatory disinformation.”
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- The Atlantic (March 31): “TikTok has a problem”
CIP cofounder Emma S. Spiro, an associate professor at the UW iSchool, was interviewed for an article about how TikTok algorithms can lead to “mass convergences of attention.
