Information Literacy

While most people across the political spectrum believe that digital disinformation is a problem, they also believe that they would personally not fall victim to it - despite studies proving otherwise.

emoving this human feedback loop by having no place for things like comment sections or public forum posts represents a sea change in the trajectory of our online landscape.

All of the generative AI products on offer today either sharply reduce or entirely remove the human feedback loop, to the detriment of the entire information ecosystem.

Since that sharply impacts the type of information that generative AI will produce, it is important - but currently impossible - to practise “trust but verify” with generative AI at scale.

In some ways, the current Russian approach to propaganda builds on Soviet Cold War–era techniques, with an emphasis on obfuscation and on getting targets to act in the interests of the propagandist without realizing that they have done so.1

Sometimes, Russian propaganda is picked up and rebroadcast by legitimate news outlets; more frequently, social media repeats the themes, messages, or falsehoods introduced by one of Russia’s many dissemination channels.

The experimental psychology literature tells us that first impressions are very resilient: An individual is more likely to accept the first information received on a topic and then favor this information when faced with conflicting messages

Put simply, our first suggestion is don't expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth.

Three factors have been shown to increase the (limited) effectiveness of retractions and refutations: (1) warnings at the time of initial exposure to misinformation, (2) repetition of the retraction or refutation, and (3) corrections that provide an alternative story to help fill the resulting gap in understanding when false “facts” are removed