Center for an Informed Public co-founder and faculty director Kate Starbird, a professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, recently received two prestigious awards for public service and impact on her field of research and society.
On June 6, during UW’s annual Awards of Excellence ceremony at the Meany Center for Performing Arts, Provost Tricia R. Serio announced Starbird as the recipient of the prestigious 2024 University Faculty Lecture Award, which is given to a current or emeritus faculty whose research, scholarship or art has been widely recognized by their peers and whose achievements have had a substantial impact on their profession, the research or performance of others, and society as a whole.
As part of the award, Starbird will deliver a special university lecture in spring 2025.
In May, during their annual conference in Honolulu, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), under the Association for Computing Machinery, honored Starbird with the 2024 SIGCHI Societal Impact Award, which recognizes mid-career or senior individuals who work to address social issues through human-computer interaction.
Starbird’s research sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction and the field of crisis informatics, which broadly includes the study of how social media and other information-communication technologies are used during crisis events. Starbird has studied, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the role of technology in various crisis events, including post-earthquake Haiti, the Arab Spring, and the Boston Marathon bombing. Through her analysis of massive amounts of social media “big data” in 2014, she was among the first researchers to identify patterns of misinformation and disinformation online.
Starbird’s research currently focuses on understanding the production and spread of online rumors, misinformation, and disinformation during crises and other breaking news events, including elections. In particular, she develops and deploys methods for conducting rapid research to help resolve rumors as they unfold and investigates the participatory nature of disinformation campaigns, exploring both top-down and bottom-up dynamics.
Starbird, one of the CIP’s five co-founders, is wrapping up a three-year term as faculty director, which will transition this fall to fellow co-founder Emma Spiro, an Information School associate professor.
