BEYOND FACT CHECKING: ADDRESSING MISINFORMATION

4-5 June 2019

This two-day workshop will explore the role of science communication professionals in an age of misinformation and a time when values outweigh facts. The session will feature social science researchers with a deep understanding of misinformation. Goals of the session include:

-      Practitioners and researchers listen, share and learn from each other.

-      Practitioners and researchers co-create collaborations moving forward.

Fist day:

The first day will be mainly dedicated to exchange between researchers on the field of cognitive science and science communicators: what is research telling us about misinformation and mass audiences, risk perception and assessment, mistrust in expertise, criticism and attacks on science?

This discussion will be followed by a workshop where we will rationalize and systematize the main questions, challenges and opportunities these widespread social behaviors represent for science communication.

Second day:

The second day will be dedicated to exploring possible practical approaches. Examples will be briefly presented and discussed: the impact of online discussion forums, effectiveness of different approaches to concrete topics such as climate change denialism, the relation between science communication and policymaking, and practical sessions for debunking mentalism and showing how everyone is gullible, will be the triggers for a day of brainstorming, discussion and definition of practical proposals for action.

The main conclusions and proposals of this pre-conference workshop will be presented on a session during the main conference.

This workshop is sponsored by the Kavli Foundation

RESEARCHER PANEL

Brian Southwell

Brian has been involved in several large scale efforts to convene thinking about misinformation as a problem and as a target for remedy. For example, in 2015, he co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Communication on misinformation. In 2018, he co-edited Misinformation and Mass Audiences for the University of Texas Press. In 2018, he also organized the Misinformation Solutions Forum in Washington, D.C., together with the Rita Allen Foundation and the Aspen Institute. In addition, Southwell and colleagues have published a variety of empirical studies on misperceptions and public understanding of health, such as Southwell et al. (2018) in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Aikin et al. (2017) in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, or Weeks et al. (2012) in Health Communication.

John Cook

John researches ways to counter misinformation, with a focus on fostering critical thinking through educational interventions. He has developed misconception-based learning curriculum currently being tested in U.S. high schools. He is experimentally testing different forms of inoculating messages on different social media platforms. He is currently developing a mobile game that teaches critical thinking about climate change using humorous interactive exercises.

Sara K. Yeo

Dr. Yeo's research interests broadly include science and risk communication, public opinion of STEM issues, and information seeking and processing. Her work relevant to misinformation is related to individuals' motivation and ability to accept misinformation. Specifically, her work investigates how cognitive and affective heuristics are used in the formation of attitudes and opinions toward science.

Jaron Haramban

Having done ethnographic research for his PhD in the world of (Dutch) conspiracy theorists, Jaron addresses in the motivations and reasons why they (and similar people) distrust our epistemic authorities, like science, and how they challenge their authority by publicly assailing them. Moving beyond a strict deficit paradigm (such people have no good understanding of science), he shows how the arguments and experiences of these people resonate with social scientific critiques of science as objective, disinterested and universal, a sign of the democratization or popularization of science. Based on that research, he developed alternatives to deal with such distrust of science, which he deployed in the Dutch vaccination debate, and in the development of high school teaching material in cooperation with the Anne Frank Foundation. Drawing on newer research, he addresses the role of social media platforms, and specifically the algorithms they use, in the spread and virality of disinformation and conspiracy theories online.

John Besley

John will share main insights coming from research on the potential downside of 'aggressive' responses to people who disagree with a consensus in the context of a broader discussion of how we're thinking about "strategy" in science communication. Underlying this is a desire to get people to focus more on what beliefs, feelings, or frames one wants to foster (or not foster) --over time--rather than always aiming to correct people out of frustration/anger. He will also share research done to understand how scientists think about communication tactics, objectives, and goals.

Laura Smillie

Laura will share main aspects of the relation between science communication, misinformation and policymaking at EU level.

PROGRAMME

DAY 1: Tuesday 4 June

DAY 2: Wednesday 5 June