CIP Innovation Fund (Whatcom County Project example)

CIP Innovation Fund (Whatcom County Project example) is sponsored by University of Washington Center for an Informed Public (CIP). The University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public (CIP) Innovation Fund supports projects exploring the changing role of public trust and the spread of misinformation in local communities.

Research | Center for an Informed Public The Center for an Informed Public is an interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Washington that helps individuals, communities and institutions navigate our complex information environments.

Being Sensemakers: A Framework for University-Based Rapid Research of Elections, Crisis Events, and Beyond The CIP’s 2024 Election Rumor Research Project (ERRP), which pursued a kind of research that often runs counter to traditional academic norms and incentives: it moves fast, responds to urgent public information needs in real time, spans and integrates multiple disciplines and prioritizes public impact over publication in peer-reviewed journals.

This work produces research at speed while still using peer-reviewed methodologies, providing valuable educational experiences for students and research when it is needed most.

Read the Full Report Read a Report Summary CIP researchers present 6 papers and workshop at 2025 CSCW conference in Norway In October 2025 at the 28th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW) in Bergen, Norway, CIP-affiliated researchers facilitated one conference workshop and presented 6 papers, including one that received a Best Paper award.

Alien of the gaps: How 3I/ATLAS comet was turned into a spaceship online When we reach the frontier of current knowledge, we’re tempted to insert a higher power into the space where answers aren’t yet satisfying for all, CIP postdoctoral scholar Mert Can Bayar wrote in December 2025 about the 3I/ATLAS interstellar comet.

In a November 2025 study published in Science , CIP faculty member Martin Saveski , a UW Information School assistant professor, and co-authors from Stanford University and Northeastern University, detail how a new tool shows it is possible to turn down the partisan rancor in an X feed.

The persuasive potential of AI-paraphrased information at scale In a July 2025 PNAS Nexus journal article, the CIP's Saloni Dash , Yiwei Xu , Madeline Jalbert , and Emma Spiro explore how AI-paraphrased messages have the potential to amplify the persuasive impact and scale of information campaigns.

Explore a list of peer-reviewed articles and other contributions published in 2025 authored or co-authored by faculty members, research scientists and fellows, postdoctoral scholars, doctoral and other students affiliated affiliated with the CIP.

Information pathways in online science communication: The role of platform actors and news media ‘Sneak it in’: Information literacy instruction related to misinformation In a Library Quarterly article, Charles Bugre , Stacey Wedlake , Jason C. Young , and co-authors investigate how librarians can get people interested in misinformation topics without ruining their public trust.

The researchers analyzed data from five half-day workshops that included 16 librarians from Washington and Texas using a thematic analysis approach. Read the paper .

Emotional resonance and participatory misinformation: Learning from a K-pop controversy In a Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review article, Sungha Kang , Rachel Moran-Prestridge and Jin Ha Lee use a case study of a K-pop controversy to show how audiences act not just as consumers but as co-authors of alternative narratives in moments of uncertainty.

These dynamics reflect a broader trend where emotionally driven discourse increasingly shapes public perception, challenging the role of facts in public debate. Read the article .

With visual integrity and care: A framework for mixed methods research on visual social data Explore a list of peer-reviewed articles and other contributions published in 2025 authored or co-authored by faculty members, research scientists and fellows, postdoctoral scholars, doctoral and other students affiliated affiliated with the CIP.

The conspiracist theory of power In an article published in Politics and Governanc e, Mert Can Bayar and Scott Radnitz argue that conspiracism is not merely a critique of power, but an intellectual foundation for a political regime embodied in autocracy, oligarchy, or an alternate technocracy. This analysis informs our understanding of a serious yet under‐theorized threat to liberal democracy. Read the article .

The end of trust and safety? : Examining the future of content moderation and upheavals in professional online safety efforts Here Through in-depth interviews with trust and safety professionals, this paper published in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems and co-authored by Rachel Moran Prestridge , Joseph S.

Schafer , Mert Can Bayar and Kate Starbird explores upheavals within the T&S industry, examining current perspectives of content moderation and broader strategies for maintaining safe digital environments. Read the paper . ElectionRumors2022: A dataset of election rumors on Twitter during the 2022 U.S. midterms In the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media , Joseph S.

Schafer , Kayla Duskin , Stephen Prochaska , Morgan Wack , Anna Beers , Lia Bozarth , Taylor Agajanian , Michael Caulfield , Emma S. Spiro and Kate Starbird present and analyze a dataset of 1. 81 million Twitter posts corresponding to 135 distinct rumors which spread online during the midterm election season (September 5 to December 1, 2022).

They describe how this data was collected, compiled, and supplemented, and provide a series of exploratory analyses along with comparisons to a previously published dataset on 2020 election rumors. Read the article .

The persuasive potential of AI-paraphrased information at scale In PNAS Nexus , Saloni Dash , Yiwei Xu , Madeline Jalbert and Emma Spiro study how AI-paraphrased messages have the potential to amplify the persuasive impact and scale of information campaigns.

Building from social and cognitive theories on repetition and information processing, we model how CopyPasta — a common repetition tactic leveraged by information campaigns — can be enhanced using large language models. Read the article .

Podcasts in the periphery: Tracing guest trajectories in political podcasts In this paper published in Social Networks , Sydney DeMets and Emma Spiro construct a bipartite network of podcasts and their invited guests.

We then generate a network of paths that guests take as they move from one podcast to the next using entailment analysis, and evaluate if guests are typically invited to speak on less prominent shows first, before moving on to more prominent shows. Read the article .

Explore a list of peer-reviewed articles and other contributions published in 2024 authored or co-authored by faculty members, research scientists and fellows, postdoctoral scholars, doctoral and other students affiliated with the CIP. Echo chambers in the age of algorithms: An audit of Twitter’s friend recommender system In the Proceedings of the 16th ACM Web Science Conference , Kayla Duskin , Joseph S. Schafer , Jevin D.

West , and Emma S. Spiro conducted an algorithmic audit of Twitter’s Who-To-Follow friend recommendation system, the first empirical audit that investigates the impact of this algorithm in-situ. Read the article .

Governance capture in a self-governing community: A qualitative comparison of the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias In the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Zarine Kharazian , Kate Starbird , and Benjamin Mako Hill use a grounded theory analysis of interviews with members of Serbian and Croatian Wikipedia communities and others in cross-functional platform-level roles.

They propose that the convergence of three features — high perceived value as a target, limited early bureaucratic openness, and a preference for personalistic, informal forms of organization over formal ones — produced a window of opportunity for governance capture on Croatian Wikipedia. Read the article .

American academic freedom is in peril In a Science editorial, Ryan Calo and Kate Starbird write: "Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. They face a concerted effort—including by members of Congress—to undermine or silence their work documenting false and misleading internet content.

The claim is that online misinformation researchers are trying to silence conservative voices. The evidence suggests just the opposite." Read the editorial .

Understanding the discourse of the Black Manosphere on YouTube in the Companion Publication of the 2024 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Adiza Awwal uses Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) and virtual ethnography on prominent misogynistic content creators on YouTube who cater to Black males and analyzes the discursive themes to assess this as a culturally significant and racially delineated digital phenomenon.

Read the article . On measuring change in networked publics: a case study of United States election publics on Twitter from 2020 to 2022 In Information, Communication & Society , Anna Beers proposes a tri-factor model for measuring change in publics centered on creators, audiences, and platforms, and demonstrate this model on a case study of United States ‘networked election publics’ on Twitter from 2020 to 2022.

An analysis of over 600M posts from 2020 to 2022, Beers finds that right-leaning creators and audiences decreased in their activity relative to left-leaning publics in 2022, and faced increased platform moderation via suspensions and shadowbanning. Read the article .

Explore a list of peer-reviewed articles and other contributions published in 2023 authored or co-authored by faculty members, research scientists and fellows, postdoctoral scholars, doctoral and other students affiliated with the CIP.

Influence and improvisation: Participatory disinformation during the 2020 U.S. election Navigating information-seeking in conspiratorial waters: Anti-trafficking advocacy and education post QAnon Mobilizing manufactured reality: How participatory disinformation shaped deep stories to catalyze action during the 2020 U.S. presidential election In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction , Stephen Prochaska , Kayla Duskin , Zarine Kharazian , Carly Minow , Stephanie Blucker , Sylvie Venuto , Jevin D.

West , and Kate Starbird present three primary contributions: (1) a framework for understanding the interaction between participatory disinformation and informal and tactical mobilization; (2) three case studies from the 2020 U.S. election analyzed using detailed temporal, content, and thematic analysis; and (3) a qualitative coding scheme for understanding how digital disinformation functions to mobilize online audiences.

The co-authors combine resource mobilization theory with previous work examining participatory disinformation campaigns and "deep stories" to show how false or misleading information functioned to mobilize online audiences before, during, and after election day.

Sending news back home: Misinformation lost in transnational social networks Explore a list of peer-reviewed articles and other contributions published in 2022 authored or co-authored by faculty members, research scientists and fellows, postdoctoral scholars, doctoral and other students affiliated with the CIP.

Auditing Google's search headlines as a potential gateway to misleading content: Evidence from the 2020 U.S. election Combining interventions to reduce the spread of viral misinformation In Nature Human Behavior , Joe Bak-Coleman , Ian Kennedy , Morgan Wack , Andrew Beers , Joseph S.

Schafer , Emma Spiro , Kate Starbird , and Jevin West provide a framework to evaluate interventions aimed at reducing viral misinformation online, both in isolation and when used in combination. The CIP team of researchers derive a generative model of viral misinformation spread, inspired by research on infectious disease and by applying this model to a large corpus (10.

5 million tweets) of misinformation events that occurred during the 2020 U.S. election, they reveal that commonly proposed interventions are unlikely to be effective in isolation. However, our framework demonstrates that a combined approach can achieve a substantial reduction in the prevalence of misinformation. Read the article .

Community-based strategies for combating misinformation: Learning from a popular culture fandom Through a study using a virtual ethnography and semi-structured interviews of 34 Twitter users from the ARMY fandom, a global fan community supporting the Korean music group BTS, Jin Ha Lee and Emma Spiro (with Nicole Santero, Arpita Bhattacharya, and Emma May ) examine the effectiveness of fandom communities in reducing the impact and spread of misinformation within them.

“ARMY fandom exemplifies community-based, grassroot efforts to sustainably combat misinformation and build collective resilience to misinformation at the community level, offering a model for others,” the researchers wrote in a Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review article .

Bridging contextual and methodological gaps on the 'misinformation beat': Insights from journalist-researcher collaborations at speed In the Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Melinda McClure Haughey , Martina Polovo and Kate Starbird present an ethnographic study of 30 collaborations, including participant-observation and interviews with journalists and researchers, identify five types of collaborations and describe what motivates journalists to reach out to researchers — from a lack of access to data to support for understanding misinformation context.

Read the article . 'Studying mis- and disinformation in Asian diasporic communities: The need for critical transnational research beyond Anglocentrism' In a Havard Kennedy School Misinformation Review commentary, Sarah Nguyen and Rachel E.

Moran (with UNC Chapel Hill co-authors) use examples of case studies from Vietnam, Taiwan, China, and India and discuss research themes and challenges including legacies of multiple imperialisms, nationalisms, and geopolitical tensions as root causes of mis- and disinformation; difficulties in data collection due to private and closed information networks, language translation and interpretation; and transnational dimensions of information infrastructures and media platforms.

This commentary introduces key concepts driven by methodological approaches to better study diasporic information networks beyond the dominance of Anglocentrism in existing mis- and disinformation studies. Read the commentary .

Explore a list of peer-reviewed articles and other contributions published in 2022 authored or co-authored by faculty members, research scientists and fellows, postdoctoral scholars, doctoral and other students affiliated with the CIP. Stewardship of global collective behavior How do you solve a problem like misinformation?

To understand the dynamics and complexities of misinformation, it’s vital to understand three key distinctions — misinformation vs. disinformation, speech vs. action and mistaken belief vs. conviction — CIP co-founders Ryan Calo , Chris Coward , Emma Spiro , Kate Starbird and Jevin West , write in a Science Advances essay that failing to recognize these distinctions can “lead to unproductive dead ends” while understanding them is “the first step toward recognizing misinformation and hopefully addressing it.

” Read the essay in Science Advances . Learn more about the essay in a CIP blog post . Misinformation in and about science In the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science , Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom write that ”[a]ppealing as it may be to view science as occupying a privileged epistemic position, scientific communication has fallen victim to the ill effects of an attention economy.

This is not to say that science is broken. Far from it. Science is the greatest of human inventions for understanding our world, and it functions remarkably well despite these challenges.

Still, scientists compete for eyeballs just as journalists do. ” Read the PNAS article . Learn more about the paper in a CIP blog post .

Problematic political advertising on news and media websites around the 2020 U.S. elections In the Proceedings of the 21st ACM Internet Measurement Conference , UW Paul G.

Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering doctoral students Eric Zeng and Miranda Wei , Allen School undergraduate research student Theo Gregersen , Allen School professor Tadayoshi Kohno , and CIP faculty and Allen School associate professor Franziska Roesner collected and analyzed 1.

4 million online ads on 745 news and media websites from six cities in the U.S. The finding reveals the widespread use of problematic tactics in political ads, the use of political controversy for clickbait, and the more frequent occurrence of political ads on highly partisan news websites. Read the article . Addressing the root of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic 2020: Peer-reviewed publications Jason C.

Young , Brandyn Boyd, Katia Yefimova , Stacey Wedlake and Chris Coward . " The role of libraries in misinformation programming: a research agenda ." Journal of Libraianship and Information Science .

(2020) https://doi. org/10. 1177/0961000620966650 Melinda McClure-Haughey , Meena Devii Muralikuma , Cameron A.

Wood and Kate Starbird . Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction , Volume 4 , Issue CSCW2 , ( 2020) Article No.: 133 pp 1–22 https://doi. org/10.

1145/3415204 Carl T. Bergstrom , Jevin D. West.

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World , Penguin Random House (2020) Rachel E. Moran and Nikki Usher. “ Objects of journalism, revised: Rethinking materiality in journalism studies through emotion, culture and ‘unexpected objects .

’” Journalism . (2020) Carl T. Bergstrom and Joseph B.

Bak-Coleman . “Information gerrymandering in social networks skews collective decision-making. ” Nature .

(2019): 40-41. https://www. nature.

com/articles/d41586-019-02562-z Kate Starbird , Ahmer Arif , and Tom Wilson . "Disinformation as Collaborative Work: Surfacing the Participatory Nature of Strategic Information Operations." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction CI.

3, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2019). Article 127. https://doi.

org/10. 1145/3359229 http://faculty. washington.

edu/kstarbi/StarbirdArifWilson_DisinformationasCollaborativeWork-CameraReady-Preprint. pdf Rachel E. Moran and TJ Billard.

“ Imagining Resistance to Trump Through the Networked Branding of the National Park Service . ” Popular Culture and Civic Imagination . (2019) Peter M.

Krafft, Emma S. Spiro . "Keeping Rumors in Proportion: Managing Uncertainty in Rumor Systems," Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Computer Interaction ( 2019) https://dl.

acm. org/doi/fullHtml/10. 1145/3290605.

3300876 Coward, C. , McClay, C. , Garrido, M.

(2018). Public libraries as platforms for civic engagement. Seattle: Technology & Social Change Group, University of Washington Information School.

Ahmer Arif , Leo G. Stewart , and Kate Starbird . (2018).

Acting the Part: Examining Information Operations within #BlackLivesMatter Discourse. PACMHCI. 2, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2018).

Article 20. https://faculty. washington.

edu/kstarbi/BLM-IRA-Camera-Ready. pdf Philip N. Howard , Samuel Woolley and Ryan Calo (2018) Algorithms, bots, and political communication in the US 2016 election: The challenge of automated political communication for election law and administration, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 15:2, 81-93, DOI: 10.

1080/19331681. 2018. 1448735 H.

Piwowar ​​, J. Priem​ ​, V. Larivière , J.

P. Alperin , L. Matthias , B.

Norlander , A. Farley , J. D.

West , S. Haustein . (2018) “The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles.

” PeerJ 6: e4375. Carl T. Bergstrom , and Jevin D.

West . (2018) “Why scatter plots suggest causality, and what we can do about it. ” arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.

09328 Madeline Lamo & Ryan Calo (2018) Regulating Bot Speech. UCLA Law Review. https://www.

uclalawreview. org/regulating-bot-speech/ L. Kim , J.

H. Portenoy , J. D.

West , Katherine W. Stovel . (2018).

Scientific Journals Still Matter in the Era of Academic Search Engines and Preprint Archives. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. (in press) Kate Starbird , D Dailey , O Mohamed , G Lee , ES Spiro .

Engage Early, Correct More: How Journalists Participate in False Rumors Online during Crisis Events. CHI, 2018. P Krafft , K Zhou , I Edwards , K Starbird , ES Spiro .

Centralized, Parallel, and Distributed Information Processing during Collective Sensemaking. CHI, 2017. J.

D. West . (2017) How to fine-tune your BS meter.

Seattle Times. Op-ed L. Kim , J.

D. West , K. Stovel .

(2017) Echo Chambers in Science? American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting, August 2017 Ahmer Arif , John Robinson , Stephanie Stanek , Elodie Fichet , Paul Townsend , Zena Worku and Kate Starbird . (2017).

A Closer Look at the Self-Correcting Crowd: Examining Corrections in Online Rumors. Proceedings of the ACM 2017 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW ’17), Portland, Oregon, (pp. 155-168).

http://faculty. washington. edu/kstarbi/Arif_Starbird_CorrectiveBehavior_CSCW2017.

pdf Kate Starbird , Emma Spiro , Isabelle Edwards , Kaitlyn Zhou , Jim Maddock and Sindhu Narasimhan . (2016). Could This Be True?

I Think So! Expressed Uncertainty in Online Rumoring. Proceedings of the ACM 2016 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2016), San Jose, CA.

(pp, 360-371). http://faculty. washington.

edu/kstarbi/CHI2016_Uncertainty_Round2_FINAL-3. pdf A Arif , K Shanahan , R Chou , S Dosouto , K Starbird , ES Spiro. How Information Snowballs: Exploring the Role of Exposure in Online Rumor Propagation.

CSCW, 2016. M. Rosvall , A.

V. Esquivel , A. Lancichinetti , J.

D. West , R. Lambiotte .

(2014) Memory in network flows and its effects on spreading dynamics and community detection. Nature Communications. 5:4630, doi:10.

1038/ncomms5630 Kate Starbird , Jim Maddock , Mania Orand , Peg Achterman , and Robert M. Mason . (2014).

Rumors, False Flags, and Digital Vigilantes: Misinformation on Twitter after the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Short paper. iConference 2014, Berlin, Germany, (9 pages).

http://faculty. washington. edu/kstarbi/Starbird_iConference2014-final.

pdf J. D. West, T.

C. Bergstrom, C. T.

Bergstrom. (2014). Cost-effectiveness of open access publications.

Economic Inquiry. 52: 1315-1321. doi: 10.

1111/ecin. 12117 ES Spiro , J Sutton , S Fitzhugh , M Greczek , N Pierski , CT Butts . Rumoring During Extreme Events: A Case Study of Deepwater Horizon 2010.

WebSci, 2012. J. D.

West , C. T Bergstrom (2011) Can Ignorance Promote Democracy? Science.

334(6062):1503-1504. doi:10. 1126/science.

1216124 Tracking and Unpacking Rumor Permutations to Understand Collective Sensemaking Online Emma S. Spiro (PI), Kate Starbird (Co-PI) Tracking and Unpacking Rumor Permutations to Understand Collective Sensemaking Online Emma S.

Spiro (PI), Kate Starbird (Co-PI) Mass Convergence of Attention During Crisis Events Social Interaction and Peer Influence in Activity-Based Online Communities Emma Spiro (Co-PI), Zack Almquist (Co-PI) Individuals are influenced by their social networks. People adjust not only their opinions and attitudes, but also their behaviors based on both direct and indirect interaction with peers.

Questions about social influence are particularly salient for activity-based behaviors; indeed much attention has been paid to promoting healthy habits through social interaction in online communities.

A particularly interesting implication of peer influence in these settings is the potential for network-based interventions that utilize network processes to promote or contain certain behaviors or actions in a population; however, the first step toward designing such intervention strategies is to understand how, when, and to what extent social signals delivered via social interaction influence behavior.

This project fills this gap by using digital traces of behaviors in online platforms to observe and understand how social networks and interactions are associated with behavior and behavior change. Learn more about this project.

Kate Starbird (PI), Emma Spiro (Co-PI), Robert Mason (Co-PI) Hazards, Emergency Response and Online Informal Communication Project HEROIC is a collaborative, NSF funded effort with researchers at the University of Kentucky and the University of California, Irvine which strives to better understand the dynamics of informal online communication in response to extreme events.

Although the potential to exploit this capacity for emergency warnings, alerts, and response is increasingly recognized by practitioners, much remains to be learned about the dynamics of informal online communication in emergencies — and, in particular, about the ways in which existing streams of information are modified by the introduction of emergency information from both official and unofficial sources.

Our research addresses this gap, employing a longitudinal, multi-hazard, multi-event study of online communication to model the dynamics of informal information exchange in and immediately following emergency situations. Learn more about this project Jevin D. West, Carl Bergstrom The aim of the Eigenfactor Project is to develop methods, algorithms, and visualizations for mapping the structure of science.

We use these maps to identify (1) disciplines and emerging areas of science, (2) key authors, papers and venues and (3) communication patterns such as differences in gender bias. We also use these maps to study scholarly publishing models and build recommendation engines and search interfaces for improving how scholars access and navigate the literature. Learn more about this project Jevin D.

West, Carl Bergstrom The open access movement has made great strides. There has been a significant increase in Open Access journals over the last ten years and many large foundations now require OA. Unfortunately, during the same time, there has been a significant increase in exploitative, predatory publishers, which charge authors to publish with little or no peer review, editorial services or authentic certification.

We are developing a cost effectiveness tool that will create an open journal market of prices and influence scores where these kinds of journals can be objectively identified [2]. Learn more about this project Cross-platform analysis of the information operation targeting the White Helmets in Syria Ph. D.

Student Lead: Tom Wilson Through a mixed-method approach that uses ‘seed’ data from Twitter, we have examined the role of YouTube in the influence campaign against the White Helmets. Preliminary findings suggest that on Twitter the accounts working to discredit and undermine the White Helmets are far more active and prolific than those that support the group.

Furthermore, this cluster of anti-WH accounts on Twitter uses YouTube as a resource—leveraging the specific affordances of the different platforms in complementary ways to achieve their objectives. Learn more about this project Using Facebook engagements to assess how information operations micro-target online audiences using “alternative” new media Ph. D.

Student Lead: Tom Wilson Unraveling Online Disinformation Trajectories: Applying and Translating a Mixed-Method Approach to Identify, Understand and Communicate Information Provenance This project will improve our understanding of the spread of disinformation in online environments. It will contribute to the field of human-computer interaction in the areas of social computing, crisis informatics, and human centered data science.

Conceptually, it explores relationships between technology, structure, and human action - applying the lens of structuration theory towards understanding how technological affordances shape online action, how online actions shape the underlying structure of the information space, and how those integrated structures shape information trajectories.

Methodologically, it enables further development, articulation and evaluation of an iterative, mixed method approach for interpretative analysis of "big" social data. Finally, it aims to leverage these empirical, conceptual and methodological contributions towards the development of innovative solutions for tracking disinformation trajectories.

Community Labs in Public Libraries Rolf Hapel, Chris Coward, Chris Jowaisas, Jason Young Given their historic role of curating information, libraries have the potential to be key players in combating misinformation, political bias, and other threats to democracy.

This research project seeks to support public libraries in their efforts to address misinformation by developing library-based community labs: spaces where patrons can collectively explore pressing social issues.

Community labs have become popular across many European countries, where they are used to instigate democratic debate, provide discussion spaces and programming, alleviate community tensions, and promote citizenship and mutual understanding. This project aims to adapt a community lab model for use by public libraries in Washington.

Learn more about this work Misinformation media literacy: Supporting libraries as hubs for misinformation education in Fall 2023, CIP researchers started work on a three-year project, supported by $750,000 in funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, that will create a comprehensive, nationwide information literacy program that aims to increase capacity for library staff and community members to address and navigate problematic information in their local communities.

CIP researchers have partnered with instructional designers at WebJunction , a free online learning platform for library staff, that's part of OCLC Research. They will also collaborate with libraries across the U.S. to implement educational programs modeled on successful programs the CIP has supported that have reached thousands of Washington state students, teachers, librarians and other educators in recent years.

Learn more about this project Researching the changing role of public trust and misinformation in local communities in Whatcom County, Washington Learn more about this project July 2023 | In an opinion article in The Seattle Times , " Local information providers can cultivate curiosity to build community trust ," the CIP's Rachel Moran-Prestridge shared insights from this research.

Misinformation Escape Room The misinformation escape room project, co-led by CIP co-founder Chris Coward and CIP faculty member Jin Ha Lee , contributes to a growing number of game-based and experiential approaches to learning about developing resilience to misinformation.

The project seeks to move beyond the rational and cognitivist approach to learning about misinformation by situating the problem as being connected to emotion and social interactions. The project's first escape room, The Euphorigen Investigation — available at Loki's Loop — draws on research on misinformation, mixed reality games, digital youth and media, and information literacy.

Sending the News Back Home: Analyzing the Spread of Misinformation Between Vietnam and Diasporic Communities in the 2020 Election JANUARY 2021 | Learn more about Sending News Back Home JUNE 2021 | Early findings from explorations into the Vietnamese misinformation crisis " ( English | Tiếng Việt ) The ‘new elites’ of X: Identifying the most influential accounts engaged in Hamas/Israel discourse Read the CIP’s October 20, 2023, rapid research report .

The CIP’s report was cited by NBC News , The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Atlantic , WNYC Public Radio’s “On the Media” and Cyberscoop .

In a November 7, 2023, article for Nature , “ The new Twitter is changing rapidly — study it before it’s too late, ” Mike Caulfield observes: “In my more than ten years in this field, I’ve never seen an almost entirely new set of accounts come to dominate a major platform in less than a year.

” YouTube search surfaces good information about the causes of the Lahaina wildfire on Maui, but external links reveal a different world RAPID RESEARCH REPORT | In August 2023, CIP research scientist Mike Caulfield and director Kate Starbird co-authored a rapid research report examining a variety of “planned crisis event” narratives on X, formerly known as Twitter, that shared unfounded claims that the destructive and deadly Lahaina, Maui wildfire earlier that month was part of a secret plan.

At the same time, they found that YouTube’s search interface surfaced reliable information about the wildfire’s causes, even when prompted with a search targeted at bringing up coverage of non-existent deliberate causes. Read the CIP’s August 31, 2023 rapid research report .

Examining the Role of Public Libraries in Combating Misinformation Given their role in curating information and offering spaces where community members can collectively explore social issues, libraries are uniquely positioned ot be key players in combating misinformation, political polarization, and other threats to democracy, particularly at the community level.

But, while libraries have this potential, few are recognized for effectively fulfilling this role. This research project, led by UW Information School senior research scientist and CIP research fellow Jason C. Young , seeks to understand why.

What are the experiences and challenges of librarians in their professional interactions helping people navigate problematic information? What types of issues do patrons raise? What assistance or programs have librarians provided?

Have they been effective? Why or why not? What kinds of interventions could better support their efforts?

The aim of this project is to chat an applied research agenda for researchers and librarians to co-create new tools, resources, programs and services that strengthen the library's role in addressing misinformation. Election Integrity Partnership