From our own health to living together as a society in a democracy: false information poses a threat to many areas of our lives. Especially on the internet – distributed via social media – disinformation is increasingly produced and shared, even in times of crisis, and thus potentially penetrates deep into our society.
We discuss what disinformation is and what can be done about it with Prof. Dr. Hendrik Heuer. Henrik is a computer scientist and has been leading the research program at CAIS on the “Design of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” since April 2024.
Recommendations on the topic
Research literature
- Arechar, A. A., Allen, J., Berinsky, A. J., Cole, R., Epstein, Z., Garimella, K., … & Rand, D. G. (2023). Understanding and combatting misinformation across 16 countries on six continents. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(9), 1502-1513.
- Claire Wardle. 2018. Fake news. it’s complicated. Retrieved from https://medium.com/1st-draft/fake-news-its-complicated-d0f773766c79
- Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan. 2018. Thinking about “information disorder”: Formats of misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information. Ireton, Cherilyn; Posetti, Julie. Journalism, “Fake News” & Disinformation. Paris: UNESCO (2018), 43–54.
- DeVos, A., Dhabalia, A., Shen, H., Holstein, K., & Eslami, M. (2022, April). Toward User-Driven Algorithm Auditing: Investigating users’ strategies for uncovering harmful algorithmic behavior. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-19).
- Eslami, M., Rickman, A., Vaccaro, K., Aleyasen, A., Vuong, A., Karahalios, K., … & Sandvig, C. (2015, April). ” I always assumed that I wasn’t really that close to [her]” Reasoning about Invisible Algorithms in News Feeds. In Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 153-162).
- Heuer, H., & Glassman, E. L. (2022, April). A comparative evaluation of interventions against misinformation: Augmenting the who checklist. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-21).
- Heuer, H., & Glassman, E. L. (2024). Reliability criteria for news websites. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 31(2), 1-33.
- Jahanbakhsh, F., Zhang, A. X., Berinsky, A. J., Pennycook, G., Rand, D. G., & Karger, D. R. (2021). Exploring lightweight interventions at posting time to reduce the sharing of misinformation on social media. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW1), 1-42.
- Jahanbakhsh, F., Zhang, A. X., & Karger, D. R. (2022). Leveraging structured trusted-peer assessments to combat misinformation. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2), 1-40.
- Jahanbakhsh, F., Zhang, A. X., Karahalios, K., & Karger, D. R. (2022). Our Browser Extension Lets Readers Change the Headlines on News Articles, and You Won’t Believe What They Did! Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2), 1-33.
- Jahanbakhsh, F., & Karger, D. R. (2024, May). A Browser Extension for in-place Signaling and Assessment of Misinformation. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-21).
- Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 592(7855), 590-595.
- Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2017). Lateral reading: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information.
- Wineburg, S., Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., Smith, M. D., & Ortega, T. (2022). Lateral reading on the open Internet: A district-wide field study in high school government classes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(5), 893.
Popular science literature
- Bittman, L. (1985). The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider’s View. Pergamon-Brassey’s.
- Brodnig, I. (2023). Einspruch! Verschwörungsmythen und Fake News kontern in der Familie, im Freundeskreis und online. Christian Brandstätter Verlag.
- Caulfield, M., & Wineburg, S. (2023). Verified: how to think straight, get duped less, and make better decisions about what to believe online. University of Chicago Press.
- Van der Linden, S. (2023). Foolproof: Why misinformation infects our minds and how to build immunity. WW Norton & Company.
