Center for an Informed Public postdoctoral fellows Kolina Koltai and Rachel Moran recently received funding from the CIP’s Innovation Fund for a new project in Whatcom County, Washington that will explore the changing role of public trust and the spread of misinformation. The CIP has teamed up with nonprofit library organization OCLC and nonprofit, community-based newsroom Salish Current to explore how library professionals, educators and local journalists in Whatcom County build and sustain trust in their work.
The research team aims to hold a one-day workshop on issues of trust and misinformation in late Spring 2022 that will bring together individuals from across local knowledge-building institutions to talk about the challenges of building trust in an era of heightened misinformation and political polarization.
Building towards this event, team members have created a survey for Whatcom County educators, library professionals and journalists in order to better understand the issues around trust-building within the local community. The team invites any Whatcom County individual holding one of these professional roles to take the survey.
Building and sustaining trust in local libraries, schools and journalism is central to mitigating the impact of digital misinformation. Through their work, Koltai and Moran hope to build community collaboration and discussion that will strengthen connections between local information providers in Whatcom County and provide insights around trust-building and interventions into misinformation for communities across Washington state and beyond.
The CIP Innovation Fund, supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) at the UW Information School, helps support collaborative, multi-disciplinary and timely work intended to advance the CIP’s mission to resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society and strengthen democratic discourse. Read more about current projects supported by the CIP Innovation Fund.
Photo above: The Whatcom Musuem in Bellingham, Washington. By Robert Ashworth / Flickr via CC BY 2.0
