Read on Twitter
It's Thursday so that means I'll be talking about the challenges of misinformation to #scicomm! I'll share some articles I've found interesting (and one I wrote) on the theme and the discuss some of the things we could do to try to tackle this.
The threat of misinformation is something we've been more and more aware of over the past few years. Recently, I started thinking about this more deeply after a failed attempt at engaging with someone sharing fake news online and ended up writing about it https://tinyurl.com/yeh78h2k
Causes of increased misinformation are complex. Of course, social media plays a role. Just yesterday a tweet went viral of a (terrible) ad campaign by vitamin water, which was dismissive flu shots. But the ad is 8 years old - should we be focussing on it? https://tinyurl.com/ydqmcrtk
Research from earlier this year found that over half of the climate videos on YouTube go against scientific theory. This is concerning as many people do use the site as a news/ information source - it's easy to see how false news can propagate https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/f-tgo072219.php
The article suggests scientists and scicommers should use YouTube to share information themselves - but how do we make sure this is the content that people are seeing? One option could be to indicate which videos are verified/ reliable but this in itself could be challenging.
There's also the challenge that the people we most want to engage with about this might be the ones who are least receptive. One trial that used 4 different interventions to share info about vaccines & increase uptake found none to be effective https://tinyurl.com/yhsoqjpa
@aaronecarroll wrote in @nytimes “Dropping knowledge from on high […] doesn’t work.”
We need to find new, better ways to engage people with information, rather than relying on old models of ‘dropping knowledge’ and hoping that something sticks. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/upshot/health-facts-importance-persuasion.html
We need to find new, better ways to engage people with information, rather than relying on old models of ‘dropping knowledge’ and hoping that something sticks. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/upshot/health-facts-importance-persuasion.html
Simply giving people more information about science that they disagree with doesn't work - in fact, it may even strengthen their belief that they 'know more than the experts.' So what can we do?
@carljackmiller wrote on this for @newscientist, concluding with 7 rules to keep yourself safe online. These include avoiding 'passive scrolling' and outrage, thinking about things before you share them, and being wary of info found on social media https://tinyurl.com/ye54hwgt
For #scicomm one thing that is important is sharing as information accurately as possible. Avoiding over-hyped headlines (e.g. a "cure" for cancer) and being clear when reporting on animal studies.
@justsaysinmice does good work on this!
@justsaysinmice does good work on this!
This blog also gives some useful tips:
http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/01/04/lets-talk-about-scicomm/
http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/01/04/lets-talk-about-scicomm/
Researchers at Cambridge came up with a novel way to tackle misinformation with a fake news 'vaccine'. Participants played a video game where they deployed methods used in viral fake news campaigns. This increased their scepticism of such tactics later https://tinyurl.com/y47ut3qm
You can play the game yourself! Here: https://getbadnews.com/#intro
