Madeline Jalbert, a University of Washington Center for an Informed Public postdoctoral scholar based at the Information School, is continuing her research at the CIP thanks to a new postdoctoral research fellowship awarded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.
Jalbert, a social and cognitive psychologist, studies how context and subjective experiences influence memory, judgment, and decision-making. Her work primarily focuses on factors that impact judgments of truth and consensus, as well as how these judgments play out in naturalistic contexts.
“I’m thrilled to be able to continue my work at the CIP. The quality and range of expertise of the people here — from the staff to the faculty to the students — have been instrumental in my development as an early career researcher. This fellowship will allow me to further important lines of research that would not be possible elsewhere,” said Jalbert, who completed a doctorate in social psychology at the University of Southern California in 2021.
During her first three years as a CIP postdoctoral scholar, Jalbert’s research focused on how media environments influence beliefs, as well as how to effectively address the spread of misinformation. One key part of this work has been conducted in collaboration with partners Tales of Turning, a South African non-governmental organization that implements user-centered strategies to address the spread of problematic and harmful online information.
Building on that approach, Jalbert, working with colleagues including former CIP researcher Morgan Wack — now a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Zurich’s Department of International & Comparative Media Research — defined “social truth queries,” questions posted by other users that draw attention to information truth, as a new intervention to address the spread of misinformation.
Working in consultation with Tales of Turning, Jalbert and colleagues tested the effectiveness of this approach in addressing general misinformation along with election misinformation spread around Kenya’s 2022 general election (work currently under review) and South Africa’s 2024 general election. Jalbert and colleagues found social truth queries to be effective in reducing the impact of this misinformation.
Jalbert’s new NSF funding will allow her to test whether this approach may similarly be effective in addressing misinformation spread around the U.S. 2024 general election and develop practical recommendations for the broader implementation of this intervention.
“This competitive award is a wonderful recognition of Dr. Jalbert’s research agenda and approach. Mitigating the spread of misinformation is a pressing challenge, and we are eagerly anticipating the results from this NSF-funded work,” said CIP director and co-founder Emma S. Spiro, an iSchool associate professor. “We are also excited for Dr. Jalbert to continue to share her expertise and mentorship with the CIP community.”
- December 2023 | Center for an Informed Public: “Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation”
- November 2023 | Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition: “Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation”
- February 2022 | Jalbert interviewed by The Atlantic: “The bad ideas our brains can’t shake”
