Explore news coverage from April 2022 featuring the Center for an Informed Public and CIP-affiliated research and researchers.
- Inside Cybersecurity (April 1): “CISA advisory committee plans multi-authentication campaign, exploring systemic risk”
An article for Inside Washington Publishers’ Inside Cybersecurity features a rundown of a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration advisory committee meeting where CIP director Kate Starbird, who leads a subcommittee exploring mis-, dis- and mal-information, said that the subcommittee’s initial efforts have focused on elections and how CISA can work with election officials, journalists and others utilizing the agency’s past experiences combatting MDM to ‘pre-position resources that people can point to as certain threats emerge.’”
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- The Sunday Times (April 3): “Deepfakes and AI-generated faces are corroding trust in the web”
Creating deepfake images is something that’s “essentially off-the-shelf now,” CIP co-founder and UW iSchool associate professor Jevin West told The Sunday Times of London. “You can generate millions of faces very quickly” with software available online.
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- The Conversation Australia (April 3): “Ukraine biolabs’: how attempts to debunk a conspiracy theory only helped it spread”
In a contributed article by Daniel Whelan-Shamy and Timothy Graham of Queensland University of Technology reference research into the dynamics of “participatory disinformation” by CIP director and UW HCDE associate professor Kate Starbird.
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- Cult of Just Weird Podcast (April 5): “The Informed Public”
CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield was the featured guest on the “Cult or Just Weird?” podcast, where he discussed information literacy and how to find authoritative, credible information.
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- CNET (April 7): “The unsung force digging through misinformation”
Graduate and doctoral student researchers, including those at the University of Washington’s Center or an Informed Public like Taylor Agajanian (an iSchool MLIS student) and Sarah Nguyen (an iSchool PhD student) are contributing to important research that “helps media outlets shine a light on the darker corners of social media, while policymakers use it to understand its impact, including how it motivated events such as the Jan. 6 riot.” The article also features an interview with CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield.
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- The Washington Post (April 8): “China is Russia’s most powerful weapon for information warfare”
In an article about Russia’s attempts to cloud the narrative around the current war in Ukraine, CIP director and UW HCDE associate professor Kate Starbird told The Washington Post: “While the world’s eyes are still on Ukraine, and the journalists are there, it’s going to be hard for the Russian government to make great progress. But they can make progress on the edges.”
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- The Wall Street Journal (April 8): “Is it time to regulate AI?”
CIP co-founder and School of Law professor Ryan Calo was interviewed as part of a feature in The Wall Street Journal where he said: “AI isn’t a thing, like a train, but rather a set of techniques aimed at approximating some aspect of cognition. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be changes to law. The ability of AI to spot patterns in peoples’ data, for example, suggests a need for tougher privacy laws. The disparate impact AI can have on marginalized consumers or job seekers suggests a role for federal agencies to address bias.”
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- PolitiFact (April 12): “How misinformers manufacture and embellish embarrassing presidential moments”
CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield discusses how photos and videos of embarrassing presidential moments have been used in out-of-context ways to misinform or exploit for political gain. “The thing that really gets stripped out of all of this is context,” Caulfield said in an article with PolitiFact. “Even though this stuff is propagated through some of these cable news networks, a lot of it comes from this sort of participatory culture of the web or Twitter and various other platforms, where people sort of compete to come up with the decontextualized video of the day.”
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- PolitiFact (April 14): “No, the Brooklyn subway shooting was not a ‘false flag’ attack”
In an interview with PolitiFact following the April 12, 2022 mass shooting in a New York City subway station in Brooklyn, CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield said about unfounded claims that the violence was a “false flag” event. “It can be a lot more emotionally comfortable to believe that not only did it not happen, but that the thing that happened is actually a conspiracy to delegitimize your beliefs.”
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- Reader’s Digest (April 18): “Misinformation vs. disinformation: How to tell the difference”
In an article featuring a 2022 University of Colorado Boulder Conference on World Affairs seminar on mis- and disinformation, Reader’s Digest features insights from CIP co-founder and UW iSchool associate professor Jevin West, who said: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
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- PolitiFact (April 22): “Ukraine war fuels surge in fake content impersonating BBC, CNN coverage”
In a PolitiFact article exploring how Russia’s war in Ukraine has led to the creation of fake and misleading content made to look like real news coverage from BBC News and CNN, CIP faculty member Scott Radnitz, a UW Jackson School of International Studies associate professor, said: “CNN and BBC are among the few trusted international gatekeepers, so it makes sense that partisans in the Ukraine war would leverage the credibility of these outlets to spread false messages.”
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- Mother Jones (April 22): “The disinformation campaign behind a top pregnancy website”
Taylor Agajanian, a CIP graduate research assistant, was interviewed for an article in Mother Jones and discussed parallels between pregnancy-related disinformation with the thriving anti-vaccine movement. The activists, according to Agajanian “exaggerate the frequency of rare side effects, insist on the efficacy of unproven Covid treatments like ivermectin, and use their platform to sell supplements, essential oils, and other wellness products,” Mother Jones wrote. “These tactics are extremely effective at reaching people who are ‘actually very scared,’ says Agajanian. “They’re doing what they are being told is going to help them.’”
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- KUOW Public Radio (April 27): “Vietnamese diaspora in Seattle are tackling misinformation”
In an interview on KUOW’s Soundside program, CIP postdoctoral fellow Rachel E. Moran and iSchool doctoral student Sarah Nguyễn discuss their research into mis- and disinformation about the U.S. 2020 elections in Vietnamese diasporic communities. “A lot of our conversations in our focus groups revolved around the sort of emotional side of misinformation, and then the toll it took on the family level,” Moran said in the interview, noting that the impact of navigating misinformation with family is hardly looked at across academic literature.
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- GeekWire (April 27): “Microsoft President Brad Smith on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the world’s first hybrid war”
CIP co-founder and founding director Jevin West joined a book talk conversation with Microsoft President Brad Smith at the UW HUB.
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- Texas Tribune (April 30): “How Sandy Hook lies and the Jan. 6 inquiry threaten to undo Alex Jones”
In an interview with The Texas Tribune, CIP postdoctoral fellow Rachel E. Moran said that Jones “is very good at building a community of people who think the same things as him and providing them with what they want,” she said. “I think it’s easy for us when we don’t like a figure to demonize them and pretend they are not good at what they do. Actually, Alex Jones is very good at what he does.”
