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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Disinformation (misinformation that is deliberately spread) is a growing concern in today’s media-ecosystem. Many researchers have focused on disinformation as a contagion, seeking to detect its sources, stymie its spread, or inoculate the populations it might infect. However, security experts have long recognized that the danger is not disinformation itself, but rather its potential to enflame divisive, destabilizing, and anti-democratic narratives. Unlike contagions, narratives are distributed and evolve within loosely connected groups of people over long periods of time. This dynamic process, and how disinformation might alter it, is poorly understood. In this talk, I will describe my research program to examine how narratives are developed and adapted by crowds, covering recent results and planned studies. I will conclude with some thoughts about why such studies are urgently needed if we are to address the problem of disinformation in the near term.
Host: Sara De Valle