Understanding and countering the spread of misinformation in social networks: Insights from cognitive models, simulations and empirical data - Einzelansicht

Please note that the location of the seminar has changed;we will meet at the Jentower, 18th floor: Leutragraben 1, 18th floor – 07743 Jena

To go there, you need to do the following:

German: Sie nehmen dazu den Eingang neben der Deutschen Bank am Leutragraben zur Aussichtsplattform und dem Restaurant. Am Ende eines Flurs mit extrem (bunten) Bildern ist der Empfangstresen, rechts davon gehen die Aufzüge hoch. Das Prozedere ist ein bisschen ungewohnt, wenn man es nicht kennt: Sie geben an der Säule die Etage ein, in die Sie fahren wollen (18), und dort erscheint dann die Rückmeldung, in welchen Aufzug Sie einsteigen sollen. Im Aufzug selbst ist keine Etagenwahl mehr möglich.

English (translated via DeepL): To do so, take the entrance next to Deutsche Bank on Leutragraben to the viewing platform and the restaurant. At the end of a corridor with (extremely) colorful pictures is the reception counter, to the right of which the elevators go up. The procedure is a bit unusual if you're not familiar with it: you enter the floor you want to go to (18) at the console, and there you'll see the feedback telling you which elevator to get into. In the elevator itself, a floor selection is no longer possible. Please contact me via mail if you struggle to find it.

Literature (Selection)

• Jin, F., Dougherty, E., Saraf, P., Mi, P., Cao, Y., & Ramakrishnan, N. (2013). Epidemiological modeling of news and rumors on Twitter. Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Social Network Mining and Analysis, SNA-KDD 2013. https://doi.org/10.1145/2501025.2501027
• Lazer, D. M. J., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., Metzger, M. J., Nyhan, B., Pennycook, G., Rothschild, D., Schudson, M., Sloman, S. A., Sunstein, C. R., Thorson, E. A., Watts, D. J., & Zittrain, J. L. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998
• Bovet, A., & Makse, H. A. (2019). Influence of fake news in Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election. Nature Communications, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07761-2
• Cinelli, M., de Francisci Morales, G., Galeazzi, A., Quattrociocchi, W., & Starnini, M. (2021). The echo chamber effect on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(9). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023301118
• Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond Misinformation: Understanding and Coping with the ”Post-Truth” Era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.008
• Kauk, J., Kreysa, H., & Schweinberger, S. R. (2021). Understanding and countering the spread of conspiracy theories in social networks: Evidence from epidemiological models of Twitter data. PLOS ONE, 16(8), e0256179. https://doi.org/10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0256179
• Swami, V., Furnham, A., Smyth, N., Weis, L., Lay, A., & Clow, A. (2016). Putting the stress on conspiracy theories: Examining associations between psychological stress, anxiety, and belief in conspiracy theories. Personality and Individual Differences, 99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.084
• Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559
• van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., & Maibach, E. (2017). Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change. Global Challenges, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201600008
• Walter, N., Cohen, J., Holbert, R. L., & Morag, Y. (2020). Fact-Checking: A Meta-Analysis of What Works and for Whom. Political Communication, 37(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1668894
• Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U., Albarracin, D., Amazeen, M., Kendou, P., Lombardi, D., Newman, E., Pennycook, G., Porter, E., & al. (2020). The debunking handbook 2020. https://doi.org/10.17910/b7.1182

New location: Seminar room JenTower, 18th floor

Bachelor degree in Psychology or in a related discipline.

ECTS: 3

Ungraded: Active participation and presentation of a tiny analysis on a misinformation Twitter-dataset (probably a team-work)

Graded: Same as "Ungraded" plus a seminar paper/oral exam (tbd)

In this seminar, we will discover the complex but fascinating research on misinformation and conspiracy theories in social networks. This topic became increasingly relevant in the past decade, as misinformation in social networks can not be considered as a phenomenon restricted to the digital space, but also "bridging" to the physical world and to the society and its institutions. As this area of research can not be studied comprehensively in one seminar, we will discuss literature on a few key topics, which should provide us a useful "guiding thread" to understand the phenomenon:

1.    Conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes, lies, ... - what's the difference? Creating a conceptual / terminological framework
2.    (Societal) roots of the phenomenon: Why do people believe in misinformation?
3.    Understanding the spread of misinformation in social networks: Differential diffusion patterns of factual information and misinformation
4.    Combating misinformation in social networks: What interventions might work and for whom
5.    In the final sessions of our seminar, students will be introduced to the analysis of Twitter data and will then receive a Twitter misinformation dataset to conduct specific analyses; the results of these analyses will be presented to the other participants of the seminar in the final session

M.Sc. students