News coverage from May 2024 about the Center for an Informed Public and CIP-affiliated research and researchers.
- NBC News (May 1): “How a post falsely claiming migrants are registering to vote spread to millions in four weeks”
CIP postdoctoral scholar Mert Can Bayar was interviewed about narratives about non-citizen voting and election integrity claims. “You are dealing with people’s anti-immigration attitudes, people’s partisanship, people’s ideology, people’s grievances toward the system,” Bayar told NBC News. “So, what you’re trying to correct is not just one belief, but a mindset that is distrustful of the U.S. elections.”
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- The Economist (May 1): “Disinformation is on the rise. How does it work?”
CIP senior research scientist Rachel Moran-Prestridge was interviewed by The Economist for story about the challenges of disinformation research.
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- Fox13 Seattle (May 1): “What’s next for TikTok?”
CIP co-founder Ryan Calo, a UW School of Law and Information School professor, was interviewed live during Fox13 Seattle’s morning show about the free speech implications of banning TikTok.
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- The Washington Post (May 1): “The tech billionaires who helped ban TikTok want to write AI rules for Trump”
CIP co-founder Ryan Calo was interviewed for an article in The Washington Post about the implications of banning TikTok. “Doomsday-ing is good marketing,” Calo said, noting that the “political theater” of anti-TikTok bans and Cold War talk distracts from more pressing needs, like proper funding for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
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- Monterey County Weekly (May 2): “A new media literacy coalition launches with an immersion for students.”
The work of CIP co-founder Jevin West, an Information School associate professor, was featured in a Monterey County Weekly article previewing MisinfoDay California.
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- Agence France-Presse (May 3): “Myth about non-US citizen voting spikes as disinformation trend”
In an interview about misleading online narratives about non-citizen voting in the U.S., CIP postdoctoral scholar Mert Can Bayar said: “Election fraud rumors and conspiracy theories might actually have a demobilizing effect on people who believe in them because they don’t trust the system, so they don’t want to participate.”
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- KAZU Public Radio (May 3): “Assemblymember Marc Berman on the inaugural MisInfo Day California, importance of media literacy”
MisinfoDay California, inspired by the MisinfoDay educational program in Washington state co-organized by the UW Center for an Informed Public, was referenced in an interview segment about media literacy educational initiatives.
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- USA Today (May 14): “AI images used to wrongly claim R. Kelly is on a prison concert tour”
CIP co-founder Jevin West, a UW Information School associate professor, was interviewed for a USA Today factcheck regarding AI-generated images about R. Kelly that were likely to be created by programs like Stable Diffusion or MidJourney.
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- National Public Radio (May 15): “Legal experts say a TikTok ban without specific evidence violates the First Amendment”
In an interview, CIP co-founder Ryan Calo, a UW School of Law and Information School professor, discussed the legal implications of the new federal law that could force TikTok to shut down in the U.S., noting that the federal government will need to show how Project Texas, TikTok’s efforts to sequester data on U.S. users with with firewall, weren’t adequate. l the free speech implications of banning TikTok in the U.S.
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- The Markup (May 23): “The inside story of the YouTube influencer who peddles misinformation to Vietnamese communities”
UW Information School doctoral candidate and CIP-affiliated researcher Sarah Nguyễn, who studies misinformation in Vietnamese language contexts, was interviewed by The Markup about a YouTube influencer known to share false and misleading information targeting Vietnamese communities. As The Markup wrote, a “lot of the work to stem misinformation within non-English speaking communities falls on the shoulders of the very same community members who are most impacted by the misinformation,” which Nguyễn says “shouldn’t be the case.”
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- Politico Europe (May 23): “Digital Bridge newsletter for May 23”
A Politico Europe Digital Bridge tech newsletter referenced a rapid research blog post by Ashlyn B. Aske and Kate Starbird on misinterpretations of voter registration data anomalies in Washington state.
